







































































































































































































































































































































COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 























T een-Age T angles 


A TEACHER’S EXPERIENCES 
WITH LIVE YOUNG PEOPLE 


By 

LEORA M. BLANCHARD 

m 


THE UNION PRESS 

1816 Chestnut Street 
Philadelphia 



Copyright, 1923 

By the American Sunday-School Union 




MAfl 17 73 


© Cl A898645 



*Vi o i 


PREFACE 

Teen-Age Tangles is a series of personal 
experiences in the life-work of a Sunday-school 
teacher. Social work is not generally considered 
to be a part of a teacher’s task, yet it may very 
often be made a vital part dFrt when once one’s 
eyes are opened to the opportunities all about 
us. This book pictures methods of dealing with 
individual cases, deals especially with adolescent 
problems, and with difficulties and troubles that 
have their beginnings in teen-age years. 

Every story that is here told is a page from 
real life—with names of persons all changed, of 
course. Here we have the history, briefly told, 
of a large Sunday-school class of young people, 
with frank statement of the knots and kinks 
that came into certain life-lines during teen-age 
years, and of the untangling of a few of those 
knots and kinks. It is told in the hope that 
somewhere, in like manner perhaps, other life¬ 
lines may be straightened and made to form a 
smooth skein before the snarls become hopeless, 
and precious souls are lost for the want of a 
strong and patient helping hand. Too often we 
let the wayward one escape us when a little 
effort on our part would rescue the wanderer. 


m 


IV 


PREFACE 


I used to tell my girls: -“If you fall I shall still 
keep after you, but I much prefer to keep you 
from falling by wholesome instruction along 
lines where danger lurks.” 

May God grant to all of us who deal with 
young people a wider and clearer vision of 
service in connection with the teen-age possi¬ 
bilities of the Sunday-school. 

L. M. B. 

Meadowside Farm 
Conway, Mich. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1. When Responsibility Dawned . . 1 

2. A Scrimmage and a Powder Box . 11 

3. The Village Waif.23 

4. Her First Love-Letter.30 

5. The Story of Mary Moore ... 42 

6. Confidential Chats.55 

7. Flotsam and Jetsam.65 

8. Lines of Communication .... 75 

9. Where the Boys Helped .... 88 

10. The High School Dance .... 96 

11. Blackballed.105 

12. Seeking Strayed Ones . . . . . 112 

13. Tempered by Fire.126 

14. Struggles and Disappointments . . 136 

15. Apples of Sodom.145 

16. Training for Service.150 

17. “Fine Feathers”.160 

18. Harvest Time . 166 


v 




























CHAPTER I 

When Responsibility Dawned 

“Rescue the Perishing” was a favorite hymn 
in our church a few years ago. We sang it over 
and over more for its melody and sentiment, I 
suspect, than for any real interest in the mean¬ 
ing of the words. We maybe considered that 
the hymn suggested slum work, and we had no 
slums in our peaceful, well-ordered country vil¬ 
lage. As a church we were interested in foreign 
missions; and our home-mission program, 
strange to say, never included the people of our 
immediate vicinity. Although a rural com¬ 
munity, we had the usual strata of society which 
the one church—naturally the social center of 
the place—commonly attracted, and the rescue 
work was accomplished at revival time in the 
early winter of each year. 

Care for the dying, literally speaking, did not 
require much attention, for we were a healthy 
country community and boasted of a climate 
rich in ozone. The erring ones we actually criti¬ 
cized more than we wept over, and the fallen 
were kicked out, verbally, and they did the weep¬ 
ing, if there were any tears shed. We were very 



2 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


pious, very smug and pharisaic, without realiz¬ 
ing it; I with the rest, tranquil in my position 
as a Sunday-school teacher, and soul-satisfied to 
an alarming extent, had I been aware of it. 

I have been a teacher—ora kind of one—all of 
my life, for I seem to have been born with the 
teacher instinct firmly fixed in my head. At any 
rate, it appears to be my vocation in life and 
had its beginning in my early childhood. My 
parents were not Christians during those early 
years, neither did they attend any religious 
service whatever; but before I was seven years 
old I had joined a Mission Sunday-school in the 
large city in which we lived at that time, and 
my “career” began. 

First it was with dolls: rag dolls, china dolls, 
all sorts of dolls; but never a family collection, 
always a class. I had found an old copy of the 
Psalms somewhere, and a small hymn-book that 
had long been bereft of outer covers. They 
made up my stock in trade. Yet God was 
surely leading me. Later, I collected a real live 
class from the children of the neighborhood, 
mostly of Irish-Catholic parentage, a few Polish, 
one little Norwegian, and a colored child or two 
—literally, an alley bunch from the riffraff of a 
large city. My mother was scandalized when 
she discovered with whom I played, for I was 
not yet ten years old. But my tears and en¬ 
treaties touched her heart. She examined my 



WHEN RESPONSIBILITY DAWNED 3 


textbooks—which were above reproach, if some¬ 
what dilapidated—and took account of the 
bright cards and little story papers that had 
been saved from my beloved Mission. I can 
remember how I waited in fear and trembling 
for her decision, but I saw the smile on her lips 
as she turned away. She invited my motley 
crowd to the seclusion of our back yard, brought 
out a pan of fresh cookies, and left us. Later I 
overheard her say to my father: “That queer 
child of ours appears to be a born missionary.’ 7 
I kept the class intact while we lived in that 
city—which was not long, however—and man¬ 
aged to lead a few of them into the Home Mis¬ 
sion Sunday-school before we parted. I have 
never seen nor heard from any of them since. 

My next class was of ten- and twelve-year- 
old boys in a country Sunday-school. I was 
fifteen years of age that winter. How I man¬ 
aged I do not know. In all probability they did 
not learn much, but I learned a great deal about 
boyish impishness. However, I loved the class 
and got along fairly well, all things considered. 
From that time on I have taught continuously, 
first one class and then another. The odd part 
of it is that I have never been a class scholar 
for any length of time since leaving the old 
Mission. At eleven years of age I had become 
a Christian, a fact that gave zest and method 
to my teaching, and I loved and studied the 




4 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 

-a 

Book from which I taught. The years rolled 
on. I married, but kept on teaching in the old 
ordinary way; that is, I did not realize my 
responsibility. I did my best during the lesson 
period, but did not enter into the lives of my 
young people, dearly as I loved them. 

Another move, and I was located in the pleas¬ 
ant village described in the beginning of this 
chapter, and singing “Rescue the Perishing” 
with a zeal that was, after all, “not according 
to knowledge.” Again I was teaching. My 
class was very large, comprising a membership 
of over forty young men and women, with an 
average attendance of about thirty. That was 
very good, considering the nearness of several 
fine trout-streams, a forest abounding in small 
game, and a baseball diamond over in Farmer 
Smith’s meadow. In a one-room school we 
would not think of keeping so large a class 
together now, but in the days of which I write 
the organized class was unknown, and teachers 
for young people were hard to secure. I was 
considered successful because I was able to hold 
their interest and attention, yet I did not 
realize any great sense of responsibilitj^ over the 
young lives which I was unconsciously shaping. 
I prayed for them as a class, not as individuals. 
I was interested in them severally, not singly. 

Then something happened, something that 
shook me out of my smooth tranquillity and 


WHEN RESPONSIBILITY DAWNED 5 l 


forced me to face the issues of life, and examine 
at close range my part as a coworker with my 
Lord and a teacher of His gospel. One of my 
girls went wrong. I was not equal to the test. 
I knew she was drifting before she fell. I knew 
that something might be done to save her, but 
I did not know what to do, and I did not make 
an effort. I let her go. It was indeed a dark 
calamity and I felt it keenly, but, as is usual in 
such cases, I either ignored the subject, or only 
mentioned it in whispers. I drew a black line 
through her name upon my class register and 
tried to erase her memory from my heart. 

One Sunday, a year later, she came into our 
church again, her little babe clasped in her arms. 
When the service was over I stood off and looked 
on—saw Christian women pass her by without 
speaking. I remembered that she had lived all 
her life in our community; that her mother had 
died long years before, and that her father was 
anything but a Christian. Then I saw another 
woman—also a teacher of girls—come down the 
aisle, pass by my poor Queenie, and draw her 
skirts back in passing. The look of scorn on 
her cold, proud face was certainly not Christ- 
like. My heart seemed to break, and deliber¬ 
ately pushing my way through the throng I bent 
over the unfortunate girl and lifted her baby 
into my arms. I felt the curious stare of people 
all around me. Later, one of the church fathers 


6 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 

took me to task, “You make anything of such 
as she,” he said harshly, “and you encourage 
others to follow her example.” 

I did not reply—I could not. My head reeled; 
my heart ached. I was perplexed, and my old 
standards were tottering. Then I remembered 
a picture I had seen somewhere, called “The 
Modern Magdalen”: The central figure of a 
tragic group was the Christ; at His feet 
crouched a female form in the abandonment of 
despair, and around them were gathered a 
scornful company of people all in modern dress 
—men and women, who in the pride of their 
self-righteousness were passing judgment upon 
the unfortunate one. 

The experience marked an epoch in my life. 
I began to study the methods of the Master. 
I began to know my class as individuals. I 
took an inventory of their personalities, their 
characteristics, their talents, and capabilities, 
and also of their weaknesses. The names 
inscribed upon my class record w r ere further 
tabulated upon the scroll of my mind as 
follows: 

Abbie Heaton: a hysterical girl of laughter 
and tears, easily swayed by association and 
environment. 

Mary Moore: secretive by nature, intensely 
pious, and meek-appearing. 

Isabel Moore: full of frolic and vivacity. 


WHEN RESPONSIBILITY DAWNED 7 


Florence Jones: vain, and inclined to be silly; 
needs special care and training. 

Ethel Jones: quiet, very pretty, wistful and 
lovable. 

Kate Jones: also quiet, and very religious. 

Blanche Martin: very studious. 

Eloise Hope: dainty and refined; an excep¬ 
tionally fine character. 

Rosalie Hope: her madcap sister; wilful and 
capricious, but tender. 

Fanny Frye: a dark, quiet little beauty, very 
timid. 

Martha Boyer: blonde, and coquettish. 

Viola Cole: of questionable parentage; bois¬ 
terous, yet tender. 

Joy Ransom: fair, pretty, timid. 

Geraldine Clark: vivacious, not always truth¬ 
ful. 

Edna Ross: pretty, but shallow. 

Lenore Smith: the class wit. 

Also the boys: 

Gerald Blake: bashful, handsome, not frank 
in his nature. 

John Smith: sober and industrious. 

Bert Taylor: very bright, but silly. 

Glenn Lawrence: rough in appearance, and 
with a doubtful reputation. 

Donald Park: a doubting Thomas of any¬ 
thing religious. 

Clyde Simpson: red-headed and tempestuous. 


8 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


Orville Park: Don’s cousin, and an all-around 
athlete; a fine fellow. 

George North: the village black sheep. 

Roy Kramer: curly-haired and mischievous. 

Ernest Gibson: handsome, very bright, and 
extremely sensitive. 

Will Jones: quiet in manner, slow in thought. 

Floyd Jones: merry and deceptive. 

Harry Black: awkward in speech and man¬ 
ner, a slow thinker. 

Alvin Kesler: nervous in temperament, quick¬ 
tempered. 

Fred Lawrence: fine-looking, with pugilistic 
tendencies and low ideals. 

There were others, irregular in attendance, 
in whom I was interested, but the foregoing list 
comprised the class proper. In ages they ranged 
from sixteen years upward, but not many were 
over twenty. It was the custom of the school— 
an unwritten law—that young people were 
eligible for that class at sixteen, and could retain 
their membership until they married, when they 
were supposed to enter a more mature Bible 
class. 

They were just an ordinary bunch of young 
people, no worse and no better than the average 
class of young folks to-day. Many of the young 
men were at the stage of physical development 
when it required plenty of common sense and 
patience in their elders to help them over what 


WHEN RESPONSIBILITY DAWNED 9 


one writer has called “Fools’ Hill.” And the 
girls likewise: beaux and parties bounded their 
horizon on every side, and curling irons and 
powder boxes were of paramount importance in 
their inner consciousness. But beneath all the 
veneer, and the fluff and gush of this period, 
there are untried hearts to reach and young, 
susceptible lives to influence. The records of 
our church revealed the fact that we were con¬ 
stantly losing in membership during these fate¬ 
ful teen-age years. We were sure of them as 
Juniors, but later they would drop out one by 
one, or become very irregular in attendance. 
In all probability many were lost to us annually 
for the lack of care and understanding. A few 
would come back to us later, after the wild- 
oats crop had been sown, but the majority went 
out into the uncharted realm of the world, 
probably lost forever so far as the visible church 
is concerned. 

Queenie Ford was not the first one of my 
pupils to fall by the wayside. Others had come 
and gone, but God laid her case upon my heart 
in order to make me understand my personal 
responsibility. It was then that I began to 
realize that the teen-age years are a momentous 
period in human life and fraught with wonder¬ 
ful possibilities. To-day were I given such a 
class I would seek at once to have it separated 
into two at least, placing each sex in a class by 


10 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


itself; but in those days I accepted them as a 
matter of course, and only longed for a separate 
classroom in which to teach them. As it was, 
we occupied nearly one third of the church, and 
rubbed elbows with five or six other classes, all 
smaller, yet creating a medley of voices that 
must have been perplexing to an uninterested 
listener. But we got along fairly well, all things 
considered, and I was generally able to keep 
my large class interested. Class loyalty grew, 
and lives developed. 


CHAPTER II 

A Scrimmage and a Powder Box 

With all their predilection for mischief I found 
the boys easier to manage than a certain few of 
the girls. Isabel Moore and Florence Jones per¬ 
sisted in passing surreptitious notes to certain 
favorites among the boys, and had the horrid 
habit of powdering their noses during prayer; 
Abbie Heaton and Edna Ross were chronic gig¬ 
glers, and Mattie Boyer was very self-centered, 
and constantly posing for effect—yet they were 
all easily swayed by circumstances, and for the 
most part yielded readily to a guiding hand. I 
found that they could be led where they would 
not be driven. The boys were more straight¬ 
forward, with few exceptions. They were either 
frankly bad, or else they wanted to be good, 
although the latter term was not popular among 
them. They seemed to have a mortal fear of 
being called “ goody-goody/’ yet they all wanted 
to be considered gentlemen. And they were gen¬ 
tlemen. I could appeal to their sense of honor 
and get results, when a lecture on their short¬ 
comings would be “wasted on the desert air.” 

George North, among the boys, gave me more 

11 


12 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


trouble than anyone else. He was a natural 
mimic and very mischievous, fond of playing 
pranks on the girls and confiscating powder 
puffs, which he used freely upon his own face 
and with dire effect. I made it a point not to 
scold for misdemeanors during a class session, 
but to match their wit with my own and cir¬ 
cumvent their design, if possible, and I usually 
succeeded, because of the advantage of my 
position. 

For instance: One Sunday George was giving 
me an unusual amount of trouble. He had 
dropped a few beans down his neighbor’s neck 
and had made himself rather a nuisance in gen¬ 
eral. Then a fur scarf belonging to Ethel Jones 
and hanging over the back of the seat in front 
of him attracted his attention. With a quick 
movement he appropriated the scarf and drew 
the attention of the class to himself by draping 
the fur around his neck. We were studying a 
temperance lesson that day, and during the dis¬ 
cussion of a certain phase of it I gradually 
moved nearer to George. It was my custom 
whenever possible to use object lessons to drive 
home a truth, and unconsciously George was 
giving me one. I said: 

“ Whether we recognize the fact, or not, we 
are our ‘brother’s keeper’ to a great extent. 
Our influence speaks louder than our words. It 
is not enough that we avoid temptation our- 


A SCRIMMAGE AND A POWDER BOX 13 


selves; it is our duty as Christian citizens to 
remove the 1 stone of stumbling ’ from the path¬ 
way of our brother whenever and wherever we 
can do so. For instance: EthePs scarf has been 
giving our brother George considerable trouble; 
now, Ell remove this particular ‘temptation’ 
from him, and you will see that it will be much 
easier for him to give me his undivided atten¬ 
tion.” As I spoke, I seized the scarf quickly 
and returned it to its owner. 

Of course, the class laughed and I laughed 
with them; but George sat up at once and ap¬ 
plied himself to the lesson. He did not enjoy 
the laughter at his expense, yet he could not 
take offense at the good-natured rebuke. 

But after the fell calamity of which I have 
written concerning Queenie Ford, I really taught 
those young people more outside of the Sunday- 
school than in it. My home became their fre¬ 
quent meeting-place, and I usually chaperoned 
them at parties and on their sleigh rides and 
other outings. I had, however, the usual diffi¬ 
culty in convincing them that they really 
needed a chaperon on such occasions. How¬ 
ever, after a certain contretemps and its resultant 
fracas, we had no more trouble on that score: 

It was my custom to help them in their young 
people’s meetings on Sunday evenings. One 
evening, before the service, I noticed a group of 
girls all talking together in excited whispers, 


14 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


while in their midst was Abbie Heaton weeping 
copiously. At my approach they quieted, but I 
persisted in my questioning until Abbie sobbed 
out: 

“C-Clyde Simp-son in-insulted me!” 

I was amazed, and, at a fresh outburst from 
Abbie, turned my attention to the others. Rose 
Hope gave me the desired information. The 
“insult” had happened during a long sleigh ride 
on the previous Friday night; there had been 
twelve or fourteen young people in the party 
and, of course, unchaperoned. As Abbie had 
rehearsed it to Rose it looked serious, indeed, 
yet I felt doubtful. Clyde was hot-headed, but 
I had always found him upright and honorable. 
Not knowing just what to do I went out on the 
church steps, possibly in some hope of see¬ 
ing Clyde, but any move I may have intended 
was promptly forestalled by a small boy’s 
exclamation: 

“Oh say, Mrs. Morrison, Clyde Simpson and 
Don Park are having a fight out behind the 
church sheds!” 

Hastening out, I met Roy Kramer and one or 
two others in the rear of the church, and the 
knot of boys near the sheds disentangled and 
came toward me. 

“Why, Don!” I exclaimed, “I considered you 
too much of a gentleman to fight!” 

“He insulted Abbie Heaton,” blustered Don- 


A SCRIMMAGE AND A POWDER BOX 15 


aid, “and I punched his face. Ell do it again if 
he ever dares to repeat the performance!” 

“I didn’t either, Mrs. Morrison,” panted 
Clyde, sopping the blood from his face and 
stamping his foot angrily. “I only pinched her. 
We were all sitting crisscross in the bottom of 
the sleigh, and Abbie was opposite me with Don. 
She put her feet in my lap and I told her to take 
’em out. But she didn’t do it, and I pushed 
them out. She put ’em in again, and I told her 
to take ’em out or she’d be sorry. She didn’t 
take ’em out, and I pinched her. So there!” 
Every red hair on his head bristled with his 
indignation. 

“Which proves that you young folks need a 
chaperon with you on your rides,” I concluded, 
and hastened back to the girls. 

“Abbie,” I began, “I’ve just heard Clyde’s 
version of your story,” and I repeated it. “Is 
it true?” 

She confessed that it was. “Then,” I declared, 
“young lady, you are very much to blame. You 
invited Clyde’s action by your immodest con¬ 
duct. I am sorry this happened, but it proves 
conclusively that you girls must have a chaperon 
on all such occasions; you are not capable of 
looking after yourselves.” 

After that night the chaperon became a very 
necessary part of their good times. Not long 
afterward my girls seemed to develop an un- 


16 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


usual passion for rouge and powder, and I was 
seriously considering giving them a lecture on 
the subject, when the boys, of their own accord, 
undertook to teach them the much needed 
lesson. 

Another sleigh ride was planned, and it being 
Christmas Eve, we decided to attend the exer¬ 
cises in a sister church in the city eight miles 
distant. My home was their rendezvous, and 
ten couples came. While we were waiting for 
the stragglers, Gerald Blake, George North, and 
Roy Kramer held a council of some sort in an 
upper room all by themselves. After much 
shouting and cat-calls from their comrades they 
finally joined us, but kept well in the back¬ 
ground from the light. Something in their 
actions aroused the suspicions of Rose Hope, 
who was to go with Gerald that night. She 
peered at him closely, then shrieked: 

“Make him wash it off, Mrs. Morrison. I’ll 
never go into church with him tonight looking 
like that!” 

Eloise, who was with Roy, added her protest 
to Rose’s, and Fanny Frye, George’s partner, 
was almost in tears. 

The three young men did not stop to argue, 
but hustled the girls into the waiting sleigh, and 
were greeted with an uproar from their com¬ 
panions. Somebody produced a flashlight and 
exposed the faces of the culprits. The effect 


A SCRIMMAGE AND A POWDER BOX 17 


was ludicrous in the extreme. They looked like 
third-rate actors with their vermilion cheeks and 
lips, fiercely penciled eyebrows, and ghastly 
complexions. Gerald looked even more ridicu¬ 
lous than the others, as the makeup they had 
purchased was intended for brunettes and his 
tow-colored thatch of hair did not harmonize 
with his black-lashed eyes and beetling eye¬ 
brows. The boys shouted with laughter, but 
the girls all chattered like indignant magpies. 

“If you’re going to paint, why not make a 
good job of it?” demanded Gerald in self- 
defense. “What’s the use of daubing on a 
little when a lot looks a sight better? Folks are 
bound to know it anyway, and if a little is good, 
more is better. Now that’s good sense, isn’t it, 
Mrs. Morrison?” 

“If you’re going to be a fraud, be an honest 
one,” declared Roy. 

“Little dabs of powder, 

Little spots of paint, 

Make a pretty maiden 
Seem like what she ain’t,” 

chanted George, the irrepressible. 

“Make them wash it off, Mrs. Morrison,” 
pleaded Rose. “I’ll never go into the church 
tonight with those silly boys looking like that!” 

“Silly!” blustered Gerald. “Oh, Consistency, 
thy name is Woman! Suppose we boys raised 


18 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


such a howl every time you girls meddled with 
the paint box?” 

“We’d be howling all the time—no time for 
meals,” chimed in Floyd Jones from the rear 
of the sleigh. 

When I felt satisfied that the boys’ object 
lesson had accomplished its purpose, I remarked: 
“We’ll stop in town long enough for the boys to 
do some cleaning up before going on to the church, 
I think.” 

And we did, but the traces of that penciling 
could be seen in Gerald’s blonde eyebrows for 
several days. 

Oh, they were a dear, jolly crowd, and I loved 
every one. 

The matter of their reading disturbed me not 
a little. I knew from their conversation that 
many of the girls burned midnight oil over 
trashy literature. Not a few of the parents 
were intensely religious, and objected to novels 
so strenuously that they condemned anything 
and everything that might be called fiction. I 
remember distinctly a certain meeting at the 
church, when the subject of books was under 
discussion in connection with the “Thou shalt 
nots” of the local society’s curriculum, and 
some of the ideas advanced as “sound doctrine” 
were certainly surprising. 

One woman, an uneducated and naturally 


A SCRIMMAGE AND A POWDER BOX 19 

very narrow and ignorant little body with more 
prejudice than piety, placed all fiction in one 
class with the Jesse James and Bertha M. Clay 
variety without any discrimination whatever, 
and before she finished her remarkable speech 
she had disqualified all literature, both book and 
periodical, except the Bible itself, and she ex¬ 
pressed serious doubts of the fitness of certain 
portions of that. 

It was ridiculous, of course, but sad to say, 
there were several others in the congregation 
who were ready to indorse her statements, and 
I felt very sorry for the young people growing 
up amid such narrow surroundings. The foolish 
part of it was that the people who voiced such 
ideas had no knowledge whatever of their sub¬ 
ject. We had a township library filled with 
books of an indifferent order, neither good nor 
bad, and our Sunday-school library was filled 
with books that were really obsolete; for they 
dated back to a period before the Civil War and 
were not at all satisfying to a later generation. 
A course in good reading would have been a 
great blessing to our community at that time. 
We loaned books back and forth, of course, from 
private libraries, but in certain homes this was 
taboo. Fortunately, these narrow folks were in 
the minority, but I had several of their children 
in my class, which complicated my teaching. 

Ethel Jones was one of them. She was an 


20 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


exceedingly pretty girl, but her natural tastes 
were so strongly curbed that she lacked indi¬ 
viduality. By using a little tact and being per¬ 
sistent, I drew her out gradually, and finally she 
confided in me. She was hungry—positively 
hungry—for something upon which to feed her 
growing mind. She told me in the strictest con¬ 
fidence that her mother was getting stacks of 
cheap family story papers from some source, 
which were intended to paper the pantry shelves, 
and even the kitchen walls, for at that time the 
Jones family was quite poor. Certain of these 
papers Ethel smuggled into her own room occa¬ 
sionally, where they were securely hidden be¬ 
tween the springs and mattress of her bed, only 
to be brought out and read when the mother 
was asleep or off-guard. That was one reason 
for Ethel’s frequent appearances before the 
church altar as a penitent, as she constantly felt 
very wicked and deceitful while trying to enjoy 
her “forbidden fruit.” 

Poor child! It was hard to help her, yet I 
made the attempt. I bought a copy of Charles 
M. Sheldon’s book, In His Steps —then new— 
and let her take it home. A few days later Mrs. 
Jones returned the unfortunate volume to me in 
person, and asked that I give no more “such 
novels” to her children. I was certainly sur¬ 
prised. I had not expected Mrs. Jones to accept 
Sheldon’s theology, but I had thought she would 




A SCRIMMAGE AND A POWDER BOX 21 


appreciate the thoroughly Christian sentiments 
of In His Steps . 

Before that summer had ended I had occasion 
to call quite unexpectedly at the Jones farm¬ 
house. The mother chanced to be absent, but 
Ethel was curled up in a big chair reading. I 
saw her through the window before I knocked 
at the door; saw, also, the hasty slipping of the 
book beneath the chair cushion, and the startled 
look in her eyes as she came forward to greet us. 

The men of our party were in search of angle- 
worms—for we were on a fishing trip that day 
to one of our lakes—and while Ethel went to 
show them where the worms could be found, I 
crossed the room and deliberately lifted that 
cushion. From the girl’s movement and expres¬ 
sion, I half expected to discover something ob¬ 
noxious, and it was with a sense of relief that I 
uncovered one of E. P. Roe’s books, Barriers 
Burned Away. My heart ached for that poor 
girl, and I have thanked God frequently since 
that day for the mothers who have the wisdom 
to direct their children’s reading and who under¬ 
stand that they need a mental as well as a 
physical diet. 

The rest of Ethel’s brief history is soon told: 
She married young, probably her first suitor, 
and very evidently to escape the tyranny of her 
home. Her husband was a sour, cross-grained 
fellow of a low type, and—I believe fortunately 



22 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


for her—she died before the first year of her 
married life had ended. She was a sacrifice to 
the god of ignorance. 

Poor Ethel! Thus I think of her when I 
remember her sweet, pretty face with its large, 
wistful eyes. She was so hungry for mother 
love and mother sympathy—although Mrs. 
Jones was a good woman, a Christian of the old 
Spartan type, and was zealous in doing her duty 
as she saw it. The next daughter, Kate, also 
one of my class members, had more self-asser¬ 
tiveness, and I was able to help her; for Mrs. 
Jones came to me of her own accord and re¬ 
quested a list of magazines suitable for home 
reading. But this was after Ethel had been laid 
to rest in the village cemetery. I rather imagine 
Mrs. Jones went from one extreme to the other; 
for when her younger daughter, Florence, was 
old enough to enter my class the girl already 
possessed knowledge of a certain sort sufficient 
to shock the shades of her ancestors. 



CHAPTER III 
The Village Waif 

Rural communities are not exempt from snob¬ 
bishness of a certain kind. Our outside inter¬ 
ests were few, therefore prejudice to a great 
extent prevailed among us. Very little mercy 
was ever shown to an offender, although as a 
church we continued to sing melodiously, 
“ Rescue the Perishing.” Alas, that so much of 
our religion was more theoretical than practical! 
I have mentioned a stratum of respectability in 
our rural society: we had a few folks that were 
even beyond the pale of common decency; one 
in particular, a woman as wicked as she was 
handsome. She sold the birthright of her 
womanhood for the miserable pottage of fine 
clothing, and years before the events described 
in these chapters she had deserted her home 
and family, leaving her husband to rear as best 
he could their little six-year-old daughter. This 
child, Viola Cole, lived with her grandmother 
until the old lady’s death; after that, in first 
one home and then another, until at the age of 
fifteen she came to live with me. She was 
already very mature for her years, fair and 

23 


24 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


attractive, aggressive in manner, and few 
people cared to assume further responsibility in 
connection with Alice Cole’s daughter. 

Yet I found the girl teachable and very sensi¬ 
tive, despite her air of bravado. She was con¬ 
stantly overshadowed by the sins of her mother. 
Public opinion prophesied for her no better 
destiny than to follow in the wake of her mother, 
and it was to save her from such a life that I 
took her into my heart and home. She more 
than repaid any effort made in her behalf, yet 
our small world regarded her coldly and sus¬ 
piciously. As a child she had been forced to 
fight her way, and had learned to use her fists 
as well as her tongue. She was defiant and bois¬ 
terous; yet, after all, so tender and sensitive. 
She responded quickly to my care and teaching. 

One day Viola came home from school in a 
rush, banged open the doors, and literally hurled 
herself at my feet where I sat sewing. Her 
slender bodjr was shaken with the violence of her 
weeping, and her hands were tightly clinched in a 
paroxysm of fury. I lifted her up, drew her head 
to my breast and stroked her bright hair while I 
waited for her to gain sufficient control of herself 
to tell me her trouble, although I suspected it. 
At last it came: a long-drawn-out wail of despair: 

“I can’t help what my mother is, can I, Ma 
Morrison? I can’t help it—I can’t—I can’t!” 

“No,” I replied soothingly. “You cannot 


THE VILLAGE WAIF 


25 


help it. You can only help what you are your¬ 
self in life and character.” 

After awhile she told me in heartbroKen tones 
of the cruel taunts of her thoughtless school¬ 
mates; how certain mothers had requested 
their daughters not to associate with “that Cole 
girl”; and how these girls had influenced others 
not to include her in their walks and games. It 
was the sins of the parents being visited upon 
the child with a vengeance. My heart ached for 
Viola. I comforted her as best I could, but she 
was long in recovering from the cruelty of it. 
Her fine spirit seemed crushed and broken, and 
she was so discouraged that it took much effort 
on my part to get her to return to school. 

I have mothered other girls, but I must say 
in all honesty that this child of a notoriously 
wicked mother and a dissolute father was the 
most teachable that ever came under my care. 
She responded quickly to affection, and the 
teaching of her aged grandmother had been 
good so far as it went. Her mother wrote to 
her quite frequently while she was with me, and 
sent her things occasionally. 

One day a large box arrived, and as I viewed 
its contents my heart sank. It was crowded 
with finery, the most of it too old for a girl of 
fifteen, and just the sort of stuff likely to cap¬ 
tivate a susceptible girlish fancy. Among other 
things there was a hat—a dainty, expensive 


26 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


thing of delicate lace and chiffon, elaborately 
trimmed with velvet forget-me-nots. 

Viola seized it at once, clapped it upon her 
head, and marched to the mirror. Then, perk¬ 
ing her head at a saucy angle, she turned for 
my approval. 

“Not suitable,” I ventured, half expecting 
rebellion. “ It is too old for you, and it cheapens 
the rest of your clothing.” 

“All right!” she declared with rare good 
humor. “What Ma Morrison says goes with 
this child,” and before I could stop her she had 
torn off both lace and trimming with one fell 
sweep of ruthless fingers. 

Certain portions of the hat she saved, at my 
suggestion, and burned the rest without any 
visible sign of regret. 

“Out of sight, out of mind,” she sagely re¬ 
torted. It was her way of settling a temptation. 
She throttled it before it had a chance to over¬ 
come her. Dallying over it meant weakness, 
and Viola—strange offspring of unrighteous par¬ 
ents—was not weak. This girl, hounded though 
she was by gossip and prejudice, could well put 
other more fortunate people to shame. 

She was pretty, but not vain; quick-tempered, 
often rude in her speech, yet she responded loy¬ 
ally and obediently to my wishes. Two years of 
persistent Christian training wrought a marvel¬ 
ous transformation in her life, and when she 


THE VILLAGE WAIF 


27 


went back to her father’s home she went with 
a determination to make his life better as well 
as more comfortable. 

Of course, as the girl came to be openly recog¬ 
nized as my protege she experienced little or no 
trouble with her fellow-classmates in the Sunday 
school, when at the age of sixteen she entered 
my class. She was bright and witty and soon 
became a leader among them. There is a natural 
democracy among our youth. After all, they 
get their snobbishness from their elders, from 
little remarks dropped by careless wiseheads 
around the family dinner-table. So, while my 
young men and young ladies accepted my foster 
child at her face value, there were older people 
in our village who expected—and still expect— 
Viola to “come to some bad end” eventually. 
I am sure they are destined to be disappointed. 

Once, while she was yet with me, her mother 
came to see her. I happened to be away that 
day, but Viola told me all about the visit, later. 
Mrs. Cole presented her with a Bible—a beau¬ 
tiful volume—and when she was leaving gave 
her the final admonition, “ Follow Mrs. Morri¬ 
son’s teaching: you might better be dead than 
follow your mother!” 

Down in the human heart crushed by the tempter, 
Feelings lie buried which Grace can restore. 

Touched by a loving word, wakened by kindness, 
Chords that were broken may vibrate once more. 





28 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


Perhaps no churchwoman had ever concerned 
herself about the broken chords in the heart of 
Viola’s mother. Christ said, “ Unless your 
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of 
the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in nowise 
enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” As a Sunday- 
school teacher, where do I stand in His sight 
today? Is my virtue such a fragile thing that 
I must give it constant care? Is my purity so 
delicate that I cannot offer a helping hand to a 
fallen sisterhood? How do my virtue and purity 
compare with the virtue and purity of the 
Christ-man? He could stoop to the sinner and 
not be defiled by his or her sin. His righteous¬ 
ness was immune to moral filth—did not mix 
any more than oil and water naturally inter¬ 
mingle—and I am to be like Him. 

Years afterwards I visited Viola’s mother in 
a certain large city. I called on her several 
times, but I cannot record any remarkable 
change in her life thus far, yet she seems to 
entertain a hope that sometime she may be able 
to escape from the pitfall of sin into which she 
has fallen. 

There came a time in Viola’s life, when she 
was not more than eighteen and unchaperoned 
in the home of her father, when circumstances 
tended to produce certain effects, and whisper¬ 
ing tongues almost did their work; when despair 
laid hold upon the girl’s proud heart and almost 



THE VILLAGE WAIF 


29 


crushed it. Almost, but not quite. She knew 
that I loved her, that I was praying for her, that 
I believed in her. She therefore clung to my 
hand in the agony of shame, until Hope again 
came to life in her heart, and she weathered the 
gale. But she left our village; went out to a 
city where her parentage was unknown and 
there made a life for herself. I never lost track 
of her, and in the frequent interchange of letters 
grew to know the real whiteness of a soul that 
had conquered such adverse circumstances. I 
loved her, love her still; for in later years she 
married well and lives today in a beautiful home 
in a distant city, has a splendid family, and is 
respected by all who know her. She was worthy 
of my love and care, and among all the boys and 
girls of my large class, none holds a stronger 
grip upon my heart-strings than Viola Cole. 

Some have said to me, “Oh, if you had not 
held on to her, the result would have been dif¬ 
ferent^ Perhaps. But, thank God, I did hold 
on, and possibly if more girls were so held, fewer 
of them would sink beneath the waves of the 
social evil. 


CHAPTER IV 
Her First Love-Letter 

The teaching and training of that large class 
of young people was not easy. I had many 
bitter hours of discouragement. Many, many 
times I felt that my labor and love were not 
appreciated; and many times my work was 
misunderstood and discredited. Often I was 
criticized by other church workers, and it was 
said I had more interest in the entertainment 
of my class than I had in their spiritual welfare. 
Of course, the critics did not understand. They 
judged from outward appearances and knew 
nothing of our private affairs. 

We did not have many of the temptations 
common to city life, it is true, but we did have 
at that time a certain hall not far from the 
church where dances of a very low order were 
held. As I have stated, many of my young 
people lived in unchristian homes, and to coun¬ 
teract the influence and lure of the dance hall I 
opened my home to them for monthly social gath¬ 
erings, but stipulated that every amusement of 
a questionable nature must be tabooed. Experi¬ 
ence has taught me that young people, by virtue 

30 


HER FIRST LOVE-LETTER 


31 


of their youth, will meet somewhere to laugh and 
talk together, and if their parents and the church 
do not provide such a place for them, they will 
find one of their own accord, which may prove 
detrimental to their moral and spiritual welfare. 

The meetings in my home were varied as 
much as possible, but we usually had one hour 
of study on a certain topic, literary or Biblical, 
followed by an hour or two of games or other 
amusements, and often we served refreshments 
on the co-operative plan. They elected me to 
lead during the study hour, and it was my 
custom to begin our evening with prayer, 
wherein I asked our Heavenly Father to direct 
us in our work and play, and to keep us from 
evil in whatsoever we said and did. I noticed 
that during prayer at the church some of my 
young folks did not kneel or bow their heads; 
but in my home everyone was reverent, even to 
the wildest boy in the crowd. After prayer it 
always seemed easier to hold them in order, and 
the Christian life meant more to them. Some- 
times it happened that our study hour would 
extend over time, when the young folks became 
so interested in the subject under discussion 
that their play-time was for the moment for¬ 
gotten. If there was a dance on at the hall I 
would permit them to remain later, but we 
usually observed seasonable hours. 

They ran affairs to suit themselves. I quietly 


32 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


directed, kept things moving smoothly, and 
acted as guide and chaperon. Eventually we 
branched out a little, and held larger meetings 
occasionally at the town hall, but for the most 
part all their social gatherings were in my home. 
We had contests, charades, musicales, games 
which sharpened wits, but nothing that savored 
of gambling cards, dances, or “kissing-bees.” 
One winter we took up the study of Esperanto, 
and the young people thoroughly enjoyed greet¬ 
ing each other in the new language and writing 
their notes in code. 

It was not always “ smooth sledding.” I had 
my trials, and sometimes certain ones would 
become careless of conventions, if not openly 
rebellious at restrictions. The silly-girl episodes 
sometimes became serious, and at such times I 
found I could do more by appealing to the honor 
and chivalry of the young man than I could by 
expostulating with the girl. The latter would 
invariably cry, resort to subterfuges, and—keep 
on in the same old way. I invariably began 
with the girl, but usually accomplished my pur¬ 
pose by an appeal to the boy. He would stand 
mute, and probably dig the toe of his shoe in 
the ground while I talked to him; but when I 
had finished, he would lift his head, look me 
squarely in the eyes, and promise solemnly not 
to repeat the offense. I found that nine times 
out of ten he would keep his word. 


HER FIRST LOVE-LETTER 


33 


Long years of experience in dealing with 
young people have taught me a few things and 
revealed a few facts. I have found that a silly 
girl should be regarded as dangerous to the 
moral fiber of a young fellow of middle ado¬ 
lescent years, and that she is a snare to herself 
when in the association of many young men. 
As a rule, silliness is the result of ignorance; 
and trashy literature only feeds the flame. Let 
a girlish mind feed on the fluff and gush of light 
hovels, or foolish pictures, and her world vision 
will become warped and twisted. Her ideas of 
life are false. She will pattern after cheap 
heroines and expose herself to ridicule, if not to 
actual danger. She is not only a menace to her 
own safety, but a temptation to her boy friends. 
She is often immodest in her dress, and bold in 
her manners. In their hearts the young men 
despise her, and ridicule her to each other, even 
while luring her on to some extra act of silli¬ 
ness, whereby they may enjoy more fun at her 
expense. 

I had a little trouble along this line with Joy 
Ransom, but for a long time I did not suspect 
her. Unlike Flo Jones, Joy was quiet during 
our class periods, paid close attention to the 
lessons, and her pretty face would flush rosy 
red whenever a young man spoke to her, or 
paid her any attention whatever. Joy was as 
guileless as a baby, and absolutely untaught 


34 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


concerning the hidden things of life. She had 
long been on a diet of extremely light literature, 
and although very timid by nature she was 
romantic, and lived in a realm of rose-colored 
dreams. She was not silly after the order of 
Flo Jones and a few of the other girls, as her 
silliness all centered on one individual. Jo}^ 
was not quite seventeen years old at the time, 
but she imagined herself to be very much in 
love, and the object of her affection proved to 
be Gerald Blake. Of course, Gerald found It 
out before I did; so did the other boys, and 
Gerald was teased unmercifully. As it hap¬ 
pened, Gerald’s embryo affection was centered 
on Eloise Hope, so he was not at all interested 
in Joy. 

One prayer-meeting night a certain lady, who 
had little or no love in her heart for young 
people, brought me an open letter. 

“Read that!” she remarked sternly. I took 
the letter, saw that it w^as addressed to Gerald 
and was signed “Joy.” 

It was an extremely silly epistle. A few ques¬ 
tions elicited the facts. The note had been seen 
passing from hand to hand among the boys and 
then had been either carelessly dropped or delib¬ 
erately thrown away. 

Quietly, and at a time when we could be 
private, I gave the letter back to Joy. She 
glanced at it, flushed hotly, then cried in a panic: 


HER FIRST LOVE-LETTER 


35 


“I did not write that: somebody has been 
taking liberties with my name!” 

I had not expected that assertion. I believed 
what she said; but I took the opportunity to 
show her how much a boy despised a gushing 
girl, and that it was a boyish weakness to show 
to other boys his first love letters, especially if 
they came uninvited. She reiterated her state¬ 
ment that she was not the author of the note, 
and I let the matter rest. 

I had almost forgotten the incident when a 
few weeks later her father, with martial bear¬ 
ing, brought poor Joy to me. “Now, tell your 
teacher the truth!” he commanded sternly. 

The girl was frankly defiant. Her blue eyes 
flashed with rage, and I noticed that her lips 
were a white line of rebellion. I put my arm 
about her shoulders and drew her to me as I 
whispered tenderly: “Tell me, dear, what it is 
that troubles you.” 

She was prepared to fight rebuke, but the 
note of love pierced her armor, for she broke at 
once and nestled into my arms. Over her 
bowed head I smiled assurance at her indignant 
father while we silently waited. After a moment 
of bitter struggle in that tender child-heart, Joy 
confessed brokenly: “Mrs. Morrison, I did 
write that awful note to Gerald, and I sent him 
my picture. I—I lied to you that night, because 
I was so ashamed.” 


36 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


His duty done, Air. Ransom marched off and 
left the girl with me. Poor little innocent maid! 
The real hurt, after all, was to find her offered 
affection not desired and not appreciated. Her 
romantic dream of a young man’s chivalry was 
most cruelly shattered, and her confidence in his 
honor as a gentleman had received a rude shock. 
It was a very bitter lesson to Joy Ransom, and 
I’ll wager that never again will she display “her 
heart upon her sleeve for the daws to peck at.” 

sic ijc Sj: ^ 

Our church was the center of four school dis¬ 
tricts, so that during the week the members of 
my class were widely scattered. One of my boys 
who was attending school in an outlying dis¬ 
trict, where a teacher was giving ninth and 
tenth-grade work, got into serious trouble. He 
was actually guilty of immorality; and the 
affair became the common property of news¬ 
mongers. It was bandied about in whispers 
from tongue to tongue, and the story grew, per¬ 
force, with the telling. Ernest was one of my 
brightest boys; he had been deprived of educa¬ 
tional advantages in his early youth and was 
anxious to improve every opportunity that came 
his way in order to make up for lost time. He 
was not yet eighteen years old at the time of 
which I write, fine-looking, manly in deport¬ 
ment, although very mischievous, and extremely 


HER FIRST LOVE-LETTER 


37 


proud and sensitive. I was shocked at the news; 
but I made inquiries, learned the facts, and dis¬ 
covered that the boy was not all to blame; he 
had been severely tempted, and had yielded. 

Sunday came, but his place in my class was 
vacant. I then learned he had tried to run 
away from the scene of his downfall, but a kind 
father had wisely brought him back. His folks 
did not try to exonerate him, yet they did not 
desert him in his disgrace. There was no ques¬ 
tion of his guilt, and the fact that his partner 
in sin was a person of low character did not 
excuse him. 

The boy’s fine spirit seemed to be crushed by 
the calamity that had befallen him. I feared for 
him. I knew there could be no half measures 
with Ernest. He must either rise or sink. It 
was a critical time, and much depended on the 
right move. He was so proud and so ashamed. 
How was I to reach him? After an earnest 
prayer for guidance, I wrote to him: it was too 
delicate a subject to handle in person. In the 
letter I told him how sorry I was that he had 
yielded to temptation; that I did not regard 
his offense lightly, but I felt that he was truly 
repentant and ashamed. I referred him to 
Christ and His power to cleanse even the vilest 
sin; assured him that God was ready to forgive 
him, if he would but seek divine pardon, and as 
proof of it I offered my own hand to help him 


38 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


regain his footing. For his encouragement I 
repeated the story of David, of his sin and pun¬ 
ishment, and recalled to his memory that later 
in life God commended him as being “a man 
after God’s own heart.” 

I did not call Ernest’s sin a “mistake”; it 
was SIN in capital letters. It must not be 
glossed over, but washed by the blood of Christ. 
I warned him against giving up the fight and 
going downstream as driftwood, and tried to 
prove to him that it took soul strength to row 
against the tide. I urged him to take his stand 
here in the village where he had fallen, and prove 
to the people who now despised him that he 
was not so black-hearted as the gossipers now 
were endeavoring to paint him. 

It was a long letter, but I put my heart’s very 
best appeal into it. In a few days came his 
answer: a passionate cry for pardon as well as 
a confession of his guilt. 

I’m ashamed, he wrote, so ashamed that I cannot look 
decent people in the face. I thought I knew myself and 
have boasted that I could not be tempted in such a way, 
but I did not realize my own weakness. I’m afraid of 
myself. I am praying for strength. I feel that God has 
heard my prayer for pardon, and that He has forgiven me; 
but people know: they will not forget, neither are they 
willing to forgive; and I cannot face the church folks; I 
cannot go back to the class now—I just can’t do it. 

Sometimes I have disturbed you, I know, dear teacher, 
with my love of fun and foolishness. Please forgive me. 


HER FIRST LOVE-LETTER 


39 


You don’t know how it makes me feel to have you stand 
by a fellow like this; it makes me understand better the 
love God has for me. What you have said about David 
gives me courage to try again. 

It ran on and on: a pouring out of a pent-up 
boyish heart. Revival meetings were in prog¬ 
ress in our church. Again I wrote to Ernest, 
invited him to the services, urged him to take 
a public stand, and since he had never done so 
before, to ally himself outwardly with the cause 
of righteousness. People might frown and look 
dubious at first—he must expect that as part 
of his punishment for his conduct—but it was 
up to him to prove his real worth to the com¬ 
munity. I specified Friday night as the time 
of his coming, since it would give him plenty 
of time to think it over, and I felt that there 
must be some definite action—he must make a 
decision. 

How I prayed over the issue! but I went to 
church Friday night confidently expectant that 
he would be there. He was. The song service 
had already begun when we arrived at the 
church, so I had no opportunity to speak to 
him. I met his eyes, however, and smiled 
encouragement. 

We are old-fashioned Christians in this vil¬ 
lage: we cling to the faith of our fathers, and 
believe in our altar services as we believe in 
definite prayer, and we love to see seeking souls 


40 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


pray their way through to victory. It may be 
considered out of style and out of date, but it 
is our custom and we like it. 

It seemed to me that our minister preached 
unusually well that night, and the Holy Spirit 
surely clothed his words with power and car¬ 
ried conviction to his hearers. When the altar 
call was given Ernest stood trembling, hesitat¬ 
ing. His father was not a Christian at that 
time, but his mother was, and she knew the 
struggle that was going on in that young heart. 
As I looked at her, I saw her heart in her eyes; 
saw her lips moving in prayer. 

The boy looked again at me, his teacher. 
Again I smiled, and half extended my right 
hand. At that he broke away, rushed to the 
altar, and threw himself on his knees in an 
agony of shame and repentance. His tears and 
heaving shoulders awakened pity in many 
hearts that had hitherto been closed against 
him. Oh, they did not know him as I knew 
him; they did not realize the depths of his 
nature, any more than they appreciated his tal¬ 
ents, which I coveted for Christ’s service! To 
the majority of our people he was just a fun- 
loving boy; rather reckless at times, and auda¬ 
cious in behavior; and now he was covered with 
disgrace, which he justly merited. But that 
night a new life began for Ernest Gibson. I am 
confident now, as I review the past, that my 


HER FIRST LOVE-LETTER 


41 


Sunday teaching would have accomplished very 
little in his case had I not followed it up with 
plenty of weekday service. 

Rescue the perishing, Duty demands it; 

Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide; 

Back to the narrow way patiently win them; 

Tell the poor wanderer a Saviour has died. 


( 


I 


CHAPTER V 

The Story of Mary Moore 

For over twenty years I have been a teacher 
of young people; so, the difficulties and mis¬ 
haps mentioned in these chapters did not all 
occur in one year, or in two. I am telling of 
the knots and the kinks that came into the life 
lines of my dear scholars, and of the untangling 
of a few of those knots and kinks, in order that 
other life lines may, perchance, be straightened 
and made to form a smooth skein, before the 
snarls become hopeless and precious souls are 
lost for the want of a patient hand. 

I have had many surprises in my teaching 
career, and some of the young people from 
Christian homes have proved more difficult to 
manage than the children that have come to me 
from homes not Christian. This was not always 
true, of course. But, where a system of sup¬ 
pression is used in child training, one can natu¬ 
rally expect complications later on, and espe¬ 
cially during the teen-age years. Very often 
home training, I have found, has been left to 
Providence. It is possible to obtain obedience 
from youthful hands and feet up to a certain 

42 


THE STORY OF MARY MOORE 43 


time, perhaps, and yet the will that lives in the 
heart of the child not be trained to function in 
the right direction. He has been reared to the 
tune of “Thou shalt not,” and his reasoning 
faculties have not been called into action. So, 
from these homes that practice suppression and 
curb expression in the training of their children, 
have come my surprises. 

In my class register I had danger signals 
prominently displayed in connection with the 
name of Isabel Moore, but it was her little 
Priscillalike sister who gave me the greatest 
surprise that I have ever received as a teacher, 
and who proved to be the kinkiest human 
enigma I have ever tried to solve. The Moores 
were a large family, and Mary was the oldest 
child. The parents and grandparents were 
splendid people, intensely religious, and very 
proud of their old Puritan stock. They required 
obedience to the strictest letter of the law in 
their home government. I suspect that merry 
Isabel was a “thorn” in their flesh, but her very 
audacity made her the spoiled pet of the family. 
The older sister, Mary, was one of the dearest 
and best little creatures among my bevy of 
girls. She was small in stature, not brilliant 
like Isabel, but quiet and dependable. Out¬ 
wardly, at least, she was meekness personified; 
and for a long time I never suspected the seeth¬ 
ing unrest in that repressed heart. I had marked 


44 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


her as “secretive by nature,” because she was 
uncommunicative, not only with us, but with 
other young people. She kept her affairs and 
her opinions strictly to herself. I was a long 
time in analyzing her character, but in due time 
I understood, after the crisis in her life had been 
safely passed. 

Mary knew little else beside hard work and 
restraint. She was obedient, and never com¬ 
plained; so, in all probability worked harder 
than her mother realized. She not only did her 
own share of work, but Belle’s besides, for the 
merry sister was an expert at shirking all respon¬ 
sibility. Pleasures were few in the Moore house¬ 
hold. Very few games were permitted, and the 
few books were of the Thomas a Kempis type. 
Mary did not care to read; she was not a natural 
student, and her lessons in school had been 
learned by dint of great effort. Here again she 
was effaced by Isabel, who easily appropriated 
whatever educational advantages there were to 
be had, and so played at school, while Mary 
stayed at home and worked. 

The winter that Mary was seventeen Mr. 
Moore found it necessary to be away from home 
several months on business, and Mrs. Moore 
was in poor health and unable to attend church 
as usual. Isabel was attending school in the 
city, and the other children were all too young 
to go away from home, especially at night. It 


THE STORY OF MARY MOORE 45 


happened, therefore, that Mary found her free¬ 
dom suddenly thrust upon her, and with it came 
a desire to do some of the forbidden things she 
had long wanted to do. Her life thus far out¬ 
side the home had been a round of sermons and 
prayer meetings, and an occasional class party. 
Mary decided to “ backslide” from the prayer 
meeting in her dash for freedom. Among her 
schoolmates was a young-man friend, whose at¬ 
tentions Mr. Moore had positively forbidden, 
and whom she at once included in her strike for 
liberty. Young—even younger than her years 
—foolish, ignorant, and reckless, she declared to 
me afterwards that she had decided to be wicked 
just to see how it would seem. So she started 
decorously for the prayer meeting on Wednes¬ 
day night, but failed to arrive at the church. 
Her mother saw her start off in good faith, but 
never knew that her quiet Mary spent the prayer 
meeting hour strolling along a dark country road 
with Fred Lawrence. This happened several 
times, and then it became food for neighborhood 
gossip. Friends of the family tried to interfere; 
for Fred’s reputation was not of the best, even 
then; yet no one dared to tell the girl’s mother. 
The shock to Mrs. Moore might have proved 
disastrous in her low state of health. 

Mary continued to come to church, both Wed¬ 
nesday and Sunday nights, but seldom entered 
the building, going off almost immediately with 



4G 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


Fred Lawrence, and sometimes with a company 
of wild young people from the dance hall. The 
affair had already reached a serious stage when 
I learned of it. I had missed Mary, but sup¬ 
posed her to be at home with her mother. The 
gossipy story as I first heard it was certainly 
alarming; but I started at once upon her trail. 
With the assistance of a trusted friend—a gen¬ 
tleman, whom I asked to watch proceedings out¬ 
side the church and report to me—I soon learned 
the facts. Then I called all of my girls together 
for another of our private conferences on heart- 
to-heart subjects, and saw to it that Mary was 
included in the group that afternoon. I pro¬ 
ceeded to give them a lecture in a general way, 
deploring conditions relative to our infamous 
dance hall, urging them to high ideals in their 
associations, and warning them against im¬ 
modesty in speech and behavior, and above all 
against clandestine acquaintances and decep¬ 
tion in general. While I talked I watched Mary 
without seeming to do so, and with a sinking 
heart noted her defiance. Having run the full 
gamut of warnings, I began at the girl farthest 
from Mary and asked her in all seriousness to 
make me a certain promise. She complied readily, 
as did all of the circle, and then I came to Mary. 

“And you, Mary?” I questioned as easily as 
I could, although I quaked in dread, fearing her 
answer. 




THE STORY OF MARY MOORE 47 


She waited a moment, then threw up her 
head. “I should say not,” she declared hotly. 
“Fm sick of following the whims of old fogies!” 

She had dropped her mask, so I promptly dis¬ 
carded mine. “Now, Miss Mary Moore,” I 
announced as calmly as I could, “you must 
take your medicine. I have tried to shield you, 
and have treated this matter in a general way, 
hoping to open your eyes to your folly. I have 
quite accurate information concerning your 
movements for several weeks back. I know 
how you have deceived your invalid mother in 
order to keep a frequent tryst with a most un¬ 
worthy young man, in the forest, along the road, 
and at an hour when any girl should be safely 
at home. Your conduct grieves me. I cannot 
think that you understand the seriousness of 
your action. Mary, poor, foolish child, if you 
keep on in the way you have begun, in a very 
short time you will be counted a ‘fallen girl’!” 

At that the other girls all gasped and drew 
away. Mary felt their action more than my 
words, I think, for tears filled her eyes, though 
they yet snapped. Her rebellion was still un¬ 
broken. I changed my tactics: 

“Mary, I cannot tell your mother—must I 
write to your father?” 

That scared her. “Oh, please, Mrs. Morri¬ 
son,” she began, and broke down weeping. She 
moved to one side. The girls still stood staring 


48 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


at her in surprised dismay. They had heard 
much of the gossip, doubtless, but their confi¬ 
dence in Mary was so great they had not 
believed it. Eloise Hope voiced the sentiment 
of the rest when she murmured in a stifled voice: 

“Who would have believed it of Mary?’* 

Mary heard the remark, and I saw her quiver 
as from a lash. Eloise was the class pattern of 
modesty and refinement. 

When Mary had gone, I urged the girls to 
help me rescue their classmate by treating her 
kindly, and quite as if nothing had happened. 
I had not expected such defiance and stubborn¬ 
ness from the hitherto docile girl, and I felt 
grieved and disappointed. Her rudeness had 
been a distinct shock. 

However, I took her case to our all-wise 
Father, and awaited His direction. My joy 
can be imagined when, a few days later, at the 
close of a service, a hand crept into mine with 
a little loving squeeze. It was my Mary, now 
thoroughly humbled and repentant. She crept 
into my heart that day, God bless her, and to 
this day she is “bone of my bone and flesh of 
my flesh.” 

It was her first break from a lifelong habit of 
obedience, but not her last. Her mother, a 
dear gentle soul, did not realize the temptations 
that assail her children in this new free day, 
and, therefore, could not teach her daughters 


THE STORY OF MARY MOORE 49 


the lessons which they should learn in order to 
be safeguarded against its evils. Neither would 
she work with me, their teacher. She resented 
my efforts later in Isabel’s behalf, and did not 
realize the girl’s danger until it was too late to 
save her from the result of her folly. But Mrs. 
Moore never knew how near her quiet Mary 
came to slipping over the brink; and later, as 
I saw her hair whiten over Belle’s escapades, I 
was glad that a kindly Providence had spared 
her that much, at least. 

As I have intimated, religion meant restraint 
to Mary, and very little else. To her it was a 
feeling, or condition, to be endured, not enjoyed. 

“I hate the book of Revelation!” she declared 
to me one Sunday when our lesson for that day 
happened to be taken from St. John’s wonder¬ 
ful vision on the Isle of Patmos. 

“It treats of the future and eternal life,” I 
replied in surprise. 

“I don’t want to live forever,” she cried 
perversely. 

“You don’t realize what you are saying,” I 
made answer and changed the subject. 

She proved a conundrum indeed, and I was 
long in finding the key to her contradictory 
nature. Yet, after all, it was a case of igno¬ 
rance, pure and simple. Her environment was 
so narrow that her whole idea of life was gro¬ 
tesquely twisted. 


50 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


She came more often to the social gatherings 
of the class, but she was timid and awkward 
to a certain extent. She lacked initiative and 
the art of making friends, and was not attrac¬ 
tive; yet she was generally held in high esteem. 
Young men, as a rule, invariably chose the live¬ 
lier girls, and Mary was more or less a wall¬ 
flower; but that did not seem to bother her in 
the least. She did not care for the society of 
young men in general, for with a faithfulness 
as true as it is rare she never got over her infat¬ 
uation for Fred Lawrence. He was unworthy 
of her and slighted her shamelessly; but in 
her repressed and romantic heart Mary had 
crowned him her king, and she never once saw 
his “feet of clay.” But her forest wanderings 
with him had long since been broken. She 
obeyed her father’s commands respecting Fred 
until she passed her eighteenth birthday anni¬ 
versary; after that she took the reins of her 
destiny in her own incapable hands, and openly 
went with Fred—whenever he chose to go 
with her. 

Her parents were highly indignant, but the 
tears of her mother were as futile as the scold¬ 
ings of her father. She refused to be warned, 
and she would not be controlled. She became 
even more stubborn and defiant, and because 
Fred was not a Christian she renounced her 
faith also. 


THE STORY OF MARY MOORE 51 


We did what we could to change Fred from 
the evil of his ways, but he was unstable, prone 
to infidelity, and attended church services and 
retained his membership in my class solely for 
the opportunities thus afforded him to mingle 
with better young people. I do not think he 
ever entertained one honest thought concerning 
Mary. The Moores were all worth-while people 
in our community, and noted for their piety; 
they were strong workers against the saloon 
evil, and openly opposed our notorious dance 
hall. Fred Lawrence had no ideals, religiously 
or educationally. He came of very low stock, 
from people of low ideals. Mary’s infatuation 
for him pleased his vanity, and he loved to 
make trouble for the pious Moores. And he 
was not true to the girl, although he was soon 
openly engaged to marry her. Mary’s parents 
flatly refused to accept her fiance and she left 
home. 

She went to work in a town not far away, 
probably expecting Fred to follow her. But a 
new girl had appeared in the village, and fickle 
Fred promptly forgot Mary. It was then that 
the deserted girl almost swamped her small 
bark on the reefs of despair. She returned to 
the village, threw her pride to the winds, and 
made several attempts to win Fred back; but 
he had tired of his game and only laughed and 
made sport of her openly. Then the girl began 


52 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


to drift anchorless. Her eyes lost their look of 
trust and became hard and cynical. To her 
the world looked very dark indeed at that time. 
I had been trying to gain her confidence for 
a long time, but because I had failed in my 
efforts to Christianize Fred, she evidently had 
lost her faith in me. Finally I succeeded in 
getting her into my home, and in our daily 
intercourse I began to teach her the things of 
life without her realizing at first that she was 
being taught. 

After months of effort I was rewarded. Time 
had dulled the edge of her pain, and one day 
she gave me her confidence. As she told me 
her story, I was appalled at the danger that had 
menaced her and been so narrowly averted. 
Her ignorance was only equal to her stubborn¬ 
ness; and again and again she had played with 
temptation, inviting it, dallying over it, and yet 
had been saved from it in a most miraculous 
manner. 

“ Having told you so much, you will think me 
guilty of worse things,” she concluded in despair. 

“I can only believe evil of you when you say 
you are guilty,” I assured her. “If you say you 
are not, I believe you.” 

Her eyes filled with tears. “People laugh at 
me for loving Fred Lawrence, but I cannot help 
it,” she sobbed. 

“You need not be ashamed of your love, 


THE STORY OF MARY MOORE 53 


Mary,” I told her. “ You are not to blame that 
he is not the man you fondly imagined him to 
be. You were engaged to him, your vow of 
betrothal just as sacred to you as the marriage 
ceremony to which it led. You have made mis¬ 
takes; you should have listened more carefully 
to the advice of your parents, but you have man¬ 
aged to keep yourself morally clean, and I be¬ 
lieve that you are true and noble in the very 
fiber of your being, and to his shame, he is not 
worthy.” 

My little speech seemed to break down the 
last barrier between us. “ It is so good to hear 
you say that,” she breathed in relief. “I have 
felt myself to be almost an outcast, yet I could 
not see why my love for Fred should be con¬ 
sidered such a dreadful thing.” 

After that we had no further trouble with 
Mary. She felt herself to be understood at last. 
She became friendly and teachable, and my 
most useful pupil; for she began to take an 
interest in younger girls, and was soon teaching 
in a Junior grade. 

Today she is a stalwart Christian, and in a 
far distant town is sowing the gospel seed, hav¬ 
ing taken up definite work for His kingdom. 
She has never married—probably never will 
marry—yet she is domestic in her tastes, and 
would make an excellent wife and mother. 
With her rare singleness of purpose, she is pur- 


54 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


suing her work for the Master and is intent on 
winning many stars for His diadem. 

Tho’ they are slighting Him, still He is waiting, 
Waiting the penitent child to receive. 

Plead with them earnestly, plead with them gently, 
He will forgive if they only believe. 


CHAPTER VI 
Confidential Chats 

When I became convinced of the fact that 
many mothers were negligent in the home train¬ 
ing of their children regarding life problems, I 
determined, as a Sunday-school teacher, to take 
up the task in connection with my public teach¬ 
ing. After years of effort along that line I am 
convinced that it is the key to the situation, 
and will help solve many of the problems that 
confront teen-age teachers today. 

Many boys and girls of this teen-age period 
are called wild, or “girl-crazy,” or “boy-crazy,” 
when in reality they are ignorant of social pro¬ 
prieties. They want to have a good time, and 
they want to be considered popular. A free- 
and-easy system of education prevails along cer¬ 
tain lines; subjects that were once considered 
improper are now commonly and freely discussed 
in conversation and on the printed page. Our 
children know more along certain lines and less 
on certain others, and these lines, though not 
parallel, converge during these fateful teen-age 
years. They do not understand themselves, and 
they do not understand each other, though they 

55 


56 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


speak a common language. Literature has en¬ 
lightened them in some things and blinded them 
in others. The marvel is that so many of them 
get through what is surely a critical period un¬ 
scathed; and yet statistics reveal the sad fact 
that crime and immorality are on the increase, 
and that all manner of crimes are now com¬ 
mitted by youths under twenty. 

It is, or it should be, the business of a Sunday- 
school teacher to study his or her pupils, not as 
a class alone, but as individuals. There are no 
two of them alike. A successful mother of eight 
children was once asked, “Your children are so 
well trained; what system do you use?” 

The wise mother answered, “I have eight 
systems which I find necessary to use all the 
time. I cannot tell which one would be best to 
recommend to you.” 

So, we need as many systems as we have 
pupils in our classes, especially during inter¬ 
mediate years; and we should make it a point 
to study the characteristics of the period, for 
that will help us to understand the character¬ 
istics of each individual member. Some of their 
airs will be more amusing than provoking when 
we understand that this period is called quite 
generally the “star” period, and that these 
young people feel themselves quite important, 
conscious that they are filled to overflowing with 
new and abounding life. They want to “show 


CONFIDENTIAL CHATS 


57 


off,” we say, and we get quite disgusted with 
their tendency to occupy “center stage” and 
their attitude of condescension toward the 
opinions of older people. We have several 
strong nouns and some very descriptive adjec¬ 
tives we like to apply to these young folks, when 
the fact is, they are only seeking opportunities 
to express themselves in some way, while all 
around them they are usually met with “ Johnny, 
don’t!” or “Mary, Mary, do be quiet!” Their 
volcanic life does not yield naturally to a system 
of repression, but a system of expression will 
work wonders in church and home life. These 
young people want to do things, and we have 
the privilege of directing their activity. Above 
all, if we would succeed with them, we must 
love and understand them. 

At this stage of life we will find that young 
girls are naturally interrogative. They want to 
know a reason for everything, and especially in 
connection with the “must nots” of both home 
and church discipline. They want to know why 
they need a chaperon at certain times; why the 
dance savors of evil; why certain associations 
are dangerous; why petting-parties—to borrow 
a modern phrase—are obnoxious and exceed¬ 
ingly dangerous. 

I found that many of my girls were in total 
ignorance concerning the truth of these things, 
and because of that ignorance their problems 


58 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


loomed large on their daily horizon. For in¬ 
stance : As I have stated, many of my girls had 
very pious parents; several girls were studying 
music and, of course, dance music—waltz time, 
etc.—was included in their musical curriculum. 
Their mothers had told them the dance was all 
wrong, but did not tell them why it was wrong. 
The discipline of their church forbade dancing— 
it was frequently alluded to as “sin”—yet no 
one had gone further in their instruction, and 
given them a reasonable reason for its being con¬ 
sidered a questionable amusement. Now these 
girls were studying harmony; the dance and the 
music were closely associated in their minds, and 
one girl even rebuked another for keeping time 
with her foot; and two more got into serious 
trouble at home because they had two-stepped 
together at school during a noon recess. 

My girls were reasoning creatures, and several 
of them evidently concluded that the entire 
system of “Thou shalt not” was either an old- 
logy whim, or else it was a part of church dis¬ 
cipline that had been instituted as a sort of pen¬ 
ance for young people. 

“My father and mother both danced when 
they were young, yet they forbid me,” one girl 
declared, in open rebellion. 

“My music teacher gave me an exercise in 
waltz time last week and I was foolish enough to 
talk about it at the supper table, and now 



CONFIDENTIAL CHATS 


59 


mother will not let me practice it on the piano,” 
another told woefully. 

“Yet some of the church tunes are written 
with a waltz movement,” still another retorted 
in derision. 

“When you become religious you are sup¬ 
posed to leave all ordinary sense behind,” a 
fourth remarked bitterly. 

“Religion may be all right to die by, but it is 
sober stuff to live on,” was the general verdict, 
and few of our young people, as the result of 
such ignorant reasoning, ever gave themselves 
to the real service of the church. The few that 
did openly profess Christianity were slyly called 
“Goody-goodies” by their more venturesome 
companions. 

These facts pressed heavily upon my heart. 
I felt that the situation was critical in the lives 
of my young people, and that if I should under¬ 
take private teaching on vital subjects, I would 
have to be exceedingly careful not to interfere 
with parental authority, or infringe on their 
home discipline. After days and nights of 
prayer and meditation, I gathered together 
from different sources all the books I could find 
that would give me the needed information on 
the subjects I purposed to discuss, and prepared 
for aggressive action. 

Having a mixed class complicated my efforts. 
Finally I asked our pastor to give my boys a 


60 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


lecture on social purity at some time when he 
could get them together. I realized then, as I 
have realized many times since, that our Sunday 
school would have been vastly improved and 
more practical in its efforts for good, if my boys 
could have had a strong, clean-minded man 
teacher constantly and quietly to teach them 
on these vital subjects as the need for such 
instruction developed in their lives. I realized 
the utter futility of cramming knowledge in a 
wholesale way into their minds, and felt that in 
all probability the most of that lecture would 
fall by the wayside; yet it seemed the only 
thing available then, and our minister kindly 
agreed to undertake it for me. 

I think that meeting went by default in some 
way, I never really learned the truth about it. 
Perhaps it rained and the preacher did not come, 
or something else happened; but that lecture 
certainly failed to accomplish any visible results. 
I could do for my girls much more than it was 
possible for me to do for my boys, of course. 
The girls were invited to my home one Thurs¬ 
day afternoon, and in giving the invitation I 
managed to introduce sufficient mystery to 
awaken their curiosity and insure their attend¬ 
ance. About fifteen came, a jolly, laughing 
crowd, anticipating some new frolic. 

We spent half an hour discussing class prob¬ 
lems, then I closed the door to my library 


CONFIDENTIAL CHATS 


61 


against the outer world and* we went into private 
session. Two of the girls present were having 
considerable trouble at home because of their 
fondness for the dance, but they did not know 
that I was aware of their midnight flights over 
the kitchen roof, which they made occasionally 
in order to have what they called a good time, 
while their parents were peacefully sleeping. 
Had they known that, they would have been 
greatly chagrined, and certainly they would have 
been surprised had I told them that certain boys 
who had heard of their escapades had informed 
me, because of their concern for the girls’ safety. 
The boys often served as my aides-de-camp 
and proved themselves useful to me many times. 
Boylike, they cared more for the reputation of 
their girl friends than they did for their own. 

It took some tact and some strategy on my 
part to draw the culprits out, but when once 
started they became quite frank. By this time 
all of the girls were interested and began to ask 
questions, and we discussed each subject freely. 
I told them in plain language why certain amuse¬ 
ments were forbidden, and the reason dancing 
was considered a menace to morality. Some of 
their questions astonished me very much, and 
made me feel more than ever the necessity for 
such teaching. 

After that afternoon conference in my library, 
my girls came to me freely of their own accord, 


62 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


and I helped them solve their problems and over¬ 
come their difficulties to the best of my ability. 
To be sure, not all of them were ready to yield 
to persuasion, but the majority of them chose to 
do right for right’s sake. I taught them how 
to take care of themselves; and tried to make 
them feel a personal responsibility for the moral 
welfare of the young men of our class. I pointed 
out to them the weaknesses of some of these 
young men, and the necessity for discretion on 
our part if we were to do them any real good 
by their association with us. 

I am certain that nothing we ever did in the 
line of class work ever accomplished more good 
in the lives of my pupils than these heart-to- 
heart talks with my girls. I used the Bible 
more than any other textbook at our private 
meetings, for from it I drew many illustrations 
that fitted the theme under discussion, and it 
had the authority of “Thus saith the Lord.” 
I sought to make them understand that evil 
thoughts and careless actions lead to the break¬ 
ing of the Seventh Commandment, just as the 
steps to premeditated murder begin with hatred 
or covetousness in the heart itself, and that 
these greater sins are a result, not a beginning, 
of a long chain of lesser evils. In studying the 
Ten Commandments we studied them in the 
light of Jesus’ own explanation of them as given 
in the fifth chapter of Matthew. We even dis- 


CONFIDENTIAL CHATS 


63 


cussed the divorce evil from a Biblical stand¬ 
point, and searched the Word diligently to find 
out all God has revealed to us of His will con¬ 
cerning marriage. I believed then, and have 
not changed one iota in that belief since that 
time, that if there is ever a change for the better 
in our divorce laws, or an abatement of the evil, 
it will begin, like all other moral reforms, in our 
Sunday-schools. 

These private meetings 'with my class—not 
always as a body, but sometimes with only a 
very few, in scattered groups—began to attract 
public attention, and our pastor finally asked 
me to give a series of Sunday-evening lectures 
to the young people of the church and com¬ 
munity. Of course, I could not enter into a 
thorough discussion of these themes in a mixed 
gathering, but there were still plenty of sub¬ 
jects to consider, and I was glad to take up the 
work, for it enabled me to reach many young 
people who did not come regularly to Sunday- 
school. 

In these evening meetings we had an attend¬ 
ance of from seventy-five to one hundred and 
fifty, and the majority of them were young 
people. We could not carry forward the pur¬ 
pose of our private meetings to any extent, but 
we touched lives here and there, aimed for 
higher ideals, and got some results, I am sure; 
for during the fall revival there were eighty- 


64 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


five accessions to the church and nearly all of 
the converts were young people. 

We kept up these Sunday-evening meetings 
for over two years, and then organized a young 
people’s society with the young folks them¬ 
selves in charge, although I continued to work 
with them as an advisory member. During my 
lecture series we took up the study of music, 
discussed it in all its phases, from the sensuous 
to the triumphant; and my young people began 
to realize its meaning and its power as well as 
its allurement. They began to see that for every 
good thing we enjoy Satan has devised a coun¬ 
terfeit, and it was my task to teach them the 
difference between the genuine and the spurious. 
We discussed books in a similar manner, and 
several of their authors, also, and tabulated 
them in the classes to which they belonged. It 
was a large task for one Sunday-school teacher, 
I’ll admit, yet I enjoyed the work and the 
hard study it involved, and did not mourn over 
the economies that were often needed in order 
to add some coveted new book to my library. 


CHAPTER VII 
Flotsam and Jetsam 

It quite often happens that we Sunday-school 
teachers have our favorites among our scholars, 
and we are prone to judge certain others rather 
harshly and not spend much effort upon them. 
I remember one girl I had in my class for several 
years in whom I had not much confidence. 
That is, I did not expect much of her, and only 
thought that if I could manage to keep her out 
of serious mischief I should do very well. She was 
a chronic giggler, very emotional, and laughed 
and wept at will. Her giggles annoyed me very 
much, especially when I was endeavoring to press 
home the central truth of our lesson, and at any 
rebuke, however slight, she would find refuge in a 
flood of tears, thus distracting the attention of the 
entire class. I believe Edna Ross supplied me with 
more discouraged hours than any other scholar I 
ever had in the class. She possessed a character 
we describe as volatile, or effervescent. She was 
like a bubble, or a mass of froth. It seemed to 
me that all my teaching, whether public or pri¬ 
vate, either passed over her head, or else tl through 
one ear and out at the other/ ’ 

65 


66 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


Edna could be very good when she wanted to 
be good, or both spiteful and mean at the slight¬ 
est provocation, so that the old nursery rhyme 
was sometimes chanted by her schoolmates for 
her particular benefit: 

When she is good, she is very, very good, 

But when she is bad she is horrid. 

Her type is not rare by any means. She would 
be “ converted ” every fall in the church revivals, 
only to “backslide” before spring. She was 
quite zealous in doing personal work in the com¬ 
munity when she felt like it, and she could sit 
back in a rear seat of the church and make sport 
of the service also whenever she felt like it. 
We almost gave her up. The other girls quite 
frankly despised her, and the young men treated 
her as a joke. We often felt like dropping her 
name from the class list, but I am glad today 
that we did not. We included her in all of our 
class activities and prayed for patience to endure 
her giggles. 

By and by the unexpected happened: That 
girl, at nineteen years of age, settled down to 
real business and ceased her backsliding habit. 
Perhaps it took the shock of her mother’s death 
to bring her to her senses; but, at any rate, she 
suddenly changed. She seemed to grow up over¬ 
night. Today she has about finished her course 
in special training for missionary work in a 


FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 


67 


Chicago school, and very soon will go out into 
active service. From outward appearance she 
would seem but a featherweight in the work of 
the Kingdom, but I believe, from what I have 
seen of her recently, that she will make good. 
Christ saw something precious, something infi¬ 
nitely tender in the heart of that young girl that 
will make her of value to Himself in the exten¬ 
sion of His kingdom, and we learn over and over 
again the lesson He taught to Peter, “What I 
have cleansed, call not thou common.” In 
other words, what He has chosen we have no 
right to spurn, or consider as unfit for His 
service. 

In this chapter I am considering the feminine 
misfits of my large class of young people. We 
had one girl come to us one time that was con¬ 
sidered openly vile; a hopeless case, apparently, 
of moral degeneracy. Here again the mixed 
class complicated my efforts, and she would not 
attend our private meetings. The parents of 
the community did not consider her a safe asso¬ 
ciate for their children, and I never questioned 
their decision, for her reputation was unsavory, 
to say the least. I often wondered why she 
came into the class at all, but she did; and she 
was quiet and orderly, although ostracized by 
the other girls. For the sake of my boys I found 
myself often wishing that she would cease com¬ 
ing, yet I tried to teach her as thoroughly and 


08 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


as diligently as I taught any of the others, hop¬ 
ing for the best, though she seemed singularly 
unresponsive. During our class sessions she 
would sit with her big black eyes fastened on 
my face; and would exchange a pleasant word 
of greeting when I met her on the street occa¬ 
sionally. Further than that I could not pene¬ 
trate her reserve, and had no knowledge of any 
good impression being made upon her, save that 
she became regular in her attendance at our 
Sunday class sessions. But I talked the matter 
over with my girls and we added her name to 
our prayer list. By that time the popularity of 
our notorious dance hall was on the wane; this 
girl, Velma Lewis, had been one of its devotees, 
as well as one of its attractions. She was a 
favorite with a certain lumber-camp crowd, and 
was supposed to be serving as cook’s assistant 
at the boarding house. She had been in our 
neighborhood nearly a year, but nothing what¬ 
ever seemed to be known of her antecedents. I 
knew in my heart, however, that the girl was 
unhappy, and that sometime, somewhere, a 
dark tragedy had wrecked her young life. 

“I would not tolerate that girl in my class,” 
one teacher told me. “She is a moral menace 
to the entire school; I should think the super¬ 
intendent would intervene and forbid her 
coming.” 

I was very much troubled, I confess, and con- 


FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 


69 


stantly alert for the sake of my scholars—both 
the girls and the boys—and the words of that - 
other teacher tightened the tension of already 
taut nerves. 

“Yet, it was to save such as she that Christ 
died,” I answered. 

“True,” she replied tersely, “but a Sunday- 
school, as a rule, is not a moral reformatory.” 

Is it, or is it not, a moral reformatory? I 
pondered the subject over and over. Our 
Saviour was a teacher and He taught moral 
reforms, surely, and we as Bible-school teachers 
are to be like Him and follow His example. 

I went home that day more troubled in spirit 
than I cared to confess to my fellow-worker. I 
tried to think what Jesus would probably do in 
this case, and I could not remember a single 
instance in His Word where Fie had had the 
sinful ones thrust out of His Father’s House, 
save where they were openly defiling it by their 
unholy greed for gain. In my distress I went to 
Him in the privacy of my room and told Him 
all about it, feeling confident that in some way 
He would answer me. He did. When I arose 
from my knees and opened my Bible my eyes fell 
upon the eighth chapter of John, which gives in 
detail the story of Jesus’ dealing with the adulter¬ 
ous woman, whom the scribes and the Pharisees 
brought to Him, and asked that sentence be 
passed upon her according to the Mosaic law. 



70 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


I noticed that Jesus made no attempt what¬ 
ever to argue her case, but that 

He stooped down, and with His finger wrote on the 
ground, as though He heard them not. 

So when they continued asking Him, He lifted up 
Himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among 
you, let him first cast a stone at her. 

And again He stooped down, and wrote on the ground. 

And they which heard it, being convicted by their own 
conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, 
even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the 
woman standing in the midst. 

I began to wonder what the Great Teacher 
had written in the sand, to produce such an 
effect upon those self-righteous men. In all 
probability, He who knows the secrets of every 
human heart had written out, one by one, the 
concealed vices of that woman’s accusers. At 
any rate, the strange trial ended abruptly, and 
Jesus bade the accused one to “Go and sin no 
more.” 

The Word comforted me, and with more cour¬ 
age I returned to my task, but increased my 
efforts to win that girl, and prayed earnestly 
that some of the gospel seed that I was sowing 
in such weakness might find a lodging place in 
her poor heart. 

Not long afterward Velma Lewis began to 
attend our midweek prayer meetings, and one 
evening I noticed that she knelt down in her 


FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 


71 


place in one of the rear seats. She did not seem 
to notice when the service ended, but continued 
to kneel there, and as I went toward her, I saw 
that she was weeping bitterly. Several other 
women gathered around her, and some of them 
spoke a word or two of encouragement to her. 
When I slipped down beside her she grasped my 
hand and held on to it in the agony of despair. 

“There is no hope for me,” she said with a 
little moan. 

“ l Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
be as white as snow/” I repeated: “Jesus did 
not 'come to call the righteous, but sinners to 
repentance/ ” 

‘' Even me? ’’ Wonder mingled with hopeless¬ 
ness in her voice. 

"Even you. You have only to acknowledge 
your transgressions to Him and ask Him to 
cleanse and save you.” 

For a moment she struggled with her doubt 
and unbelief. I continued to quote to her from 
the Word: 

“He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded 
us according to our iniquities. 

“For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is 
His mercy toward them that fear Him. 

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He 
removed our transgressions from us.” 

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life.” 


72 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


“But I am so wicked,” she interrupted. “ You 
have been kind to me, and I am not worthy. I 
want you to know how wicked I am.” 

Our pastor had lingered near; he heard her 
words, and motioned the others to leave with 
him, and Velma Lewis and I were left alone 
together, kneeling side by side in the emptiness 
of that village church. When the last footfall 
had died away in the vestibule, she began her 
pitiful story, punctuated with her sobs and tears. 

Hers was the old, old story of a girl’s mis¬ 
guided love and faith: a dashing tempter who 
came with a false story upon his cruel lips, a 
season of blinded happiness, then the awful 
denouement and its tragic sequel. Betrayed by 
one whom she loved, and deserted by him, 
spurned by friends in her disgrace, she had fled 
from her home town, and in her despair she had 
continued to go down, down, until she, who had 
once been pure and innocent, was all befouled 
and besmirched with sin. Her baby was dead; 
murdered before its birth. She had lived a 
hard life at a lumber camp and was now doing 
housework at the boarding house near the vil¬ 
lage sawmill. 

“There is no hope for me,” she repeated bit¬ 
terly, at the conclusion of her story. 

Then I told her the story of the adulterous 
woman whom the proud Pharisees had brought 
to Christ. When I went on to tell of His love 


FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 


73 


and pity in dealing with her, she lifted her head 
for the first time, and a ray of hope lightened 
her countenance. 

‘“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and 
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness/ If you are sorry for 

your sins, sorry enough to quit- 77 

“I am/’ she interrupted. “I quit long ago— 
when I first entered your Sunday-school class / 7 
“Then , 77 I assured her, “‘ask, and it shall be 
given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and 
it shall be opened unto you . 777 

Hopefully now she began to pray, and in a 
short time she arose from her knees, the joy of 
victory in her heart. But her face was sad. 
God had forgiven her sins, but the stigma of 
them covered her with shame. 

Before the winter ended Velma Lewis left our 
village. I tried to keep up a correspondence 
with her, but she was not a good letter writer, 
and I soon lost all trace of her. 

Years went by; then one night I happened 
to be in a city depot, waiting for a train, when 
two women and a small child entered the ladies 7 
rest-room. The little company were all well- 
dressed, fine-mannered, and unquestionably nice 
people. The face of the one woman looked 
strangely familiar, and I searched the archives 
of my memory, trying to recall where I had 
seen that face with its big black eyes and deli- 




74 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


cate features, framed by curling tendrils of coal- 
black hair. 

I thought she looked at me curiously also, but 
when I met her eyes, she looked quickly away. 
She was evidently the mother of the child, who 
was about three years of age and so mischievous 
that he required almost constant attention. 
This woman was not only prosperous, but 
happy; and the face in my memory was unutter¬ 
ably sad and hopeless. Could it be? I wondered, 
as a faint suspicion of her identity entered my 
mind. My train was almost due, and already 
there was a stir among the outgoing travelers, 
and truckloads of baggage rattled out under the 
train shed. I must know for certain. A porter had 
already taken my suitcase when I approached her. 

“I beg your pardon, madam, but by any 
chance is your name Velma?” 

She turned to me quickly. “Yes, yes,” she 
cried. “And you are Mrs. Morrison; I thought 
you might be, but it has been so long, I could 
not be sure. Yes, I am Velma Lewis, Velma 
Robinson now; for I am married and live at 
M-. This is my little boy.” 

She talked breathlessly, eagerly, while walking 
with me to the train. A warm hand-clasp, a 
wave of a faultlessly gloved hand, and once 
more she had passed from my sight, and the 
sad face in my memory has been changed to a 
radiant countenance shining with happiness. 



CHAPTER VIII 
Lines of Communication 

It is true that my work with my girls has 
accomplished more visible results than I have 
been able to attain with my boys;' yet, as a 
teacher, I have been able to get very close to 
the hearts of the boys, and have helped them 
with a few of their problems, I am sure. But I 
have never permitted the farce of false modesty, 
played by not a few teachers of my acquaint¬ 
ance, to hinder me in my work for and with 
them. I did not hold private meetings with 
them as I did with the girls, yet I managed to 
have little private talks with them occasionally 
at my home, or elsewhere, for many of them 
gave me their confidence, and a certain few 
came to me for advice. 

I think now that my best line of communica¬ 
tion with them was through letter writing. It 
was my custom when away from home to send 
back little notes, and postcard messages, to 
each of my scholars, and thus keep in touch 
with them. So, it became their habit also, to 
write me when they went away to school, or 
went away for a visit, or to work a few months 

75 


76 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


somewhere away from our village. Some of 
these letters became very confidential, espe¬ 
cially during the World War, when so many of 
my boys were in France, on the high seas, or in 
the cantonments of America. I kept in touch 
with them all the time and knew where they 
were, and often their own parents came to me 
for news of them. Over there on the battle¬ 
fields, waiting perhaps in the trenches to repel 
the attack of the enemy, my boys would 
remember their old Sunday-school teacher 
and write me a line just to let me know they 
remembered. 

Letters? Such little things, yet they may 
mean so much. I shall never forget some of the 
events that have been wrought in human lives 
through the medium of letters. I have already 
mentioned Gerald Blake in these chapters. He 
was a handsome young fellow, not always reli¬ 
able, but a great favorite among the girls. He 
was one of the first among my boys to enlist in 
the army when the United States cast in her 
fortunes with the Allies. Gerald wrote to me 
quite regularly while he was drifting about in 
training camps; just ordinary newsy letters of 
his camp life. Then the time came when he 
knew his departure for “over there” was at 
hand, and one day there came to me a bulky 
letter, that detailed a dark sin that was trou¬ 
bling his conscience. He had wronged a certain 


LINES OF COMMUNICATION 


77 


girl; he had written her, but she would not 
answer. Would I look her up and report to him? 

Of course, I started at once on her trail, and 
in a few weeks located her. She was in trouble 
and had left home, but was staying with her 
sister in New York City. I forwarded to her 
Gerald’s confession. She would not write to 
him, but she wrote to me. She had loved him; 
he had betrayed her love and confidence; she 
wanted neither his money nor his pity. I sent 
her letter to Gerald. He wrote me that through 
all of his folly and his numerous love affairs she 
was the one girl for him; that he really loved 
her, and desired nothing so much as to make 
her his legal wife and the legitimate mother of 
his child. (They were both very young, and it 
was another case of too much liberty, and a 
total disregard for conventionalities, which is so 
common among our young people today.) 

Again I forwarded this letter of Gerald’s on 
to the girl, stranded in New York City. There 
was quite an interval of silence, then a long 
letter came to me from the girl, who was by 
that time in a maternity hospital in the large 
city; she had been married to Gerald Blake at 
midnight of the day before. 

The same mail brought me a letter from 
Gerald. He told me of the departure from that 
southern camp, of their long, quiet, unlighted 
journey to Hoboken, New Jersey. He wrote of 


78 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


Camp Meredith, and of the soldiers held under 
quarantine, and of his unavailing attempts to 
obtain a leave of absence in order to reach 
New York City. Finally, he had told his story 
to his chaplain and with the latter’s help and 
in his company had gone to the metropolis, 
secured a license and a minister, and then at 
the hospital had married the girl at midnight. 

“Now,” he wrote, “I am back in camp ex¬ 
pecting orders to sail at any time. But I can 
face German bullets now with a clear conscience, 
thanks to you. When a fellow faces death he 
would like to know his slate is clean. I have 
written to my father, told him all, and he will 
care for my wife in case I never come back. In 
the meantime, she will have the usual allowance 
that Uncle Sam gives to a soldier’s wife.” 

It was a bit of tragedy from real life, and I 
could hardly imagine the fun-loving, rather 
bashful Gerald as taking so prominent a part 
in it. There was another silence, then a card 
came announcing his safe arrival overseas. 
Other letters came from him occasionally, some 
from the trenches, finally from a French hos¬ 
pital; but his wound was not serious, and he 
was soon back in the Service. 

The girl in New York City wrote frequently: 
long, confidential letters that revealed much in 
the heart and life of the poor child, who was 
forced to face so soon the stern realities of this 


LINES OF COMMUNICATION 


79 


life, and enter wifehood and motherhood so illy 
prepared. When she had been married but 
twelve days her baby had come. 

But the war ended at last; Gerald returned 
to America, and today, in a little cottage home 
in the suburbs of a certain city, he lives with 
the little wife whom he wooed and won under 
such heart-rending circumstances. According 
to the storybooks one would naturally expect 
them to “live happily ever afterward”; but the 
foundations of such a marriage are not very 
secure, and there may be “breakers ahead.” 

Gerald Blake was one of the promising ones 
among my boys. He was of good parentage, 
and a favorite socially. He was always well 
dressed, usually had plenty of spending money, 
and had opportunities that many others did not 
enjoy; but there were many in the class not so 
well favored, and some of these less favored ones 
have made good, where the others have signally 
failed. Not all, of course, but a sufficient num¬ 
ber of promising ones have made shipwreck of 
their lives to teach me that I cannot always be 
governed by external appearances in my esti¬ 
mate of personal character. 

Among my boys was one that, against the 
background of all of his relatives massed to¬ 
gether, stands out now as a shining light. In 
fact, his people belonged to the very lowest 
stratum of our local society. How it happened 


80 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


I do not know, for his people were not church¬ 
goers, but Tom Marshall incidentally dropped 
into my Sunday-school class one day at the time 
when Gerald Blake, George North, and others 
of whom I have been writing were still mem¬ 
bers. We welcomed Tom, and though crowded 
made room for him among us. 

As people were inclined to speak derisively of 
“that Cole girl,” so they mentioned rather 
rudely ‘ ‘ that Marshall boy.’ ’ This will explain, 
I think, Tom’s status in our community. There 
was not anything prepossessing in his appear¬ 
ance, it is true. He was large and ungainly, and 
his clothing had failed to keep up with his 
growth, so that his wrists and his ankles ap¬ 
peared to be unduly long. His manners were 
rough, to be sure, but he had had no oppor¬ 
tunity whatever to acquire any refinement. He 
swore as naturally as he breathed; but he was 
bright, and I looked on him as “raw material” 
which the Master Craftsman had thrown in my 
way for some purpose. 

My girls were at first inclined to titter at his 
appearance, and later, when he became quite 
regular in his attendance, they resented his 
presence among us. He seemed especially to 
offend the fastidious taste of Eloise Hope. As 
a matter of fact, Tom furnished me with mate¬ 
rial for several of my general talks before I had 
things running smoothly. 


LINES OF COMMUNICATION 


81 


Among the boys there was more of the real 
spirit of democracy; and Tom had proved his 
worth, I suspect, on more than one occasion, 
by knocking a few of them down in their en¬ 
counters at “Four Corners,” near the village 
store. In dealing with boys I have found it 
best not to inquire too closely into their maneu¬ 
vers, since angelic boys are quite foreign to this 
old earth. So long as they are lusty males there 
is bound to be more or less “scrapping” among 
them, and I have never entertained any desire 
whatever to reconstruct them bodily. “Boys 
will be boys.” We want them to be boys, not 
“sissies,” not embryo cherubs, but just genuine 
boys. But I am intensely interested in their 
motives, their heart life. I know that they 
grow from the inside out, so I like to get down 
beneath that outer shell of bluff and daring, and 
find out, if I can, what goes on inside. I know 
that a boy covers up his real self; that he hates 
to expose his real feelings, which is doubtless 
the reason why he is so often misunderstood. 

Right here let me digress a moment: I re¬ 
member a small boy, a little friend of mine at 
one time, who was not at all understood by his 
own parents. He was a “case” all right, and 
managed to get into all the mischief he could 
find—and it was plenty, I am sure. His parents 
practiced upon him the well-known system of 
repression. He was reared to the tune of 


82 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


“ Johnny, don’t! ” Well, Johnny did everything 
he was expected not to do. But beneath all that 
mischief-loving, patience-trying, nerve-racking 
exterior, Johnny had a heart full of love, of boy¬ 
ish zeal and energy that was seeking an outlet, 
which his parents did not suspect, much less 
understand. In reality he wanted to do some¬ 
thing: he did not know what, but there was an 
inward impelling force driving him into action. 
The things he attempted to do were frustrated, 
often ridiculed; and neither parent had the wis¬ 
dom to train the youngster’s latent powers 
toward a proper development. Johnny always 
seemed to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, 
and in the wrong way, but—he did it. 

One day it happened that his parents went 
away together somewhere and left him at home 
alone. Johnny had been in open disgrace for a 
week; but that morning he privately planned 
to make reparation and do something that 
would surely please his sorely tried mother. He 
had heard her express a wish for a mountain ash 
tree; she admired its cut-leafed foliage and its 
bright berries, and there were very few shade 
trees in their dooryard. Johnny waited until 
his parents had passed out of sight around the 
corner, then he ran to the barn for a shovel. 
Back through the woods trudged the boy, until 
on the high bank along the creek he discovered 
a fine group of young mountain ash trees. Very 



LINES OF COMMUNICATION 


83 


carefully he made his selection, and then began 
the hard job of digging it, for its roots were 
long and intertwined with other roots in its 
fibrous bed. His face was streaked with dirt 
and perspiration, and his hands were blistered 
when he finally lifted it out. But it proved too 
large and too heavy to carry with the load of 
earth he had left clinging to its roots. He 
removed a portion of the soil, but it was still 
too heavy for a small boy to carry. Then he 
cut and trimmed it as he had seen a nursery¬ 
man do when setting out young trees in his 
father’s orchard; and finally, by dint of great 
effort and plenty of patience, he dragged his 
peace offering home. 

Now where should he plant it? There was a 
young orchard north of the house, a couple of 
tall lilacs west of the house, and a hedge of 
black-elderberry shrubs in the rear. The south 
side was unadorned save for a few scraggy rose 
bushes, and Johnny concluded that the southern 
location was just the place for mother’s tree. 
To be sure, the roses were in the way, and their 
tops were full of briars and their roots took up 
a lot of room. Again he shoveled and perspired, 
and at last had a hole sufficiently deep to take 
in the feet of his tree. Then he carried water 
and carefully soaked the earth about it, stamped 
in the soil with his feet, and then lay down to 
rest his aching muscles. He could hardly wait 


84 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


until the folks returned, and tried to imagine 
his mother’s pleasure when she should first 
behold the coveted tree. 

At last he heard the sound of wheels coming 
along the road, and—yes, that was Nan, his 
father’s old gray horse. In a sudden panic of 
shyness, Johnny fled behind the house, and 
peeped around a corner as the buggy turned 
into the lane. He heard his mother’s exclama¬ 
tion; but, strange to say, it was not expressive 
of delight. Then came a call in a tone threat¬ 
ening as well as peremptory. 

“What do you mean by digging up my rose 
bed?” Johnny’s mother was stern. 

“You—you—said you would like a—a moun¬ 
tain ash tree,” stammered poor Johnny. 

We do not like to repeat all that John’s 
mother said, but that evening saw a very tired 
and very much discouraged little boy once more 
digging up the unfortunate tree; and while the 
big tears chased each other over his cheeks, 
when there was no one to see them, he dragged 
the young mountain ash tree out back of the 
chicken house, and there once more transplanted 
it in the ground. Today that tree lives and bears 
its scarlet berries in the chicken yard, a monu¬ 
ment to one mother’s mismanagement in the 
home training of her son. 

What was the value of a rose plant, or two, 
compared with such a gift from a tender, mis- 


LINES OF COMMUNICATION 


85 


understood, boyish heart? His sister told me 
the story a few years later, after Johnny had 
run away from home at the conclusion of a 
fracas with his father. He went out into the 
world not at all prepared to cope with its diffi¬ 
culties, and with scarcely a tender tie binding 
him to the old home nest. 

John’s story in no way relates to Tom, but 
simply illustrates my interest in boys in gen¬ 
eral. When Tom first came among us, I thought 
I had a young “bully” on my hands; I soon 
found that he was not really aggressive, but cir¬ 
cumstances had compelled him to assume the 
defensive at certain times in his career; for, 
though poor and uncouth in appearance, he was 
proud-spirited. 

In due time my girls manifested a friendly 
spirit toward him; and the boys, not daring to 
poke fun at his misfit clothing, were obliged to 
admire his mental ability as well as his muscular 
development and training. I was surprised to 
find Tom something of a student, for he soon 
became interested in the pocket Testament 
which our Sunday-school gave to him. 

Gradually his roughness of manner dropped 
away from him; his quick mind appreciated the 
work of the class, and he outgrew his old haunts 
and companions. After a few months he went 
away to school, and as he was obliged to work 
his own way he could only be with us on rare 


86 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


occasions, but he managed to keep in touch with 
us. I lost track of him for a while after his grad¬ 
uation, but one day a letter came to me from 
overseas. Tom was in the United States Navy 
and doing his “bit” in the World War. He 
wrote to me often, always addressing me as 
“Dear Teacher.” Some of his letters were so 
good that I had them read publicly to our school, 
along with other letters from our boys who were 
at that time in the service. In brilliancy Tom’s 
letters outshone them all; and the portions of 
description that were not mutilated by the cen¬ 
sors were certainly fine. He very cleverly kept 
me informed of his movements by using key 
words occasionally. His mention of “Sim’s cir¬ 
cus” revealed to me the fact that he was at that 
time with Admiral Sims’ fleet of ships and in 
European waters. 

When the war was over he returned to our 
village, as fine a sailor lad as ever trod the deck 
of a man-of-war. Like others in my class, he 
went away a boy, but he came back a man. For 
a few months he lingered among us, then one 
day there was a quiet wedding in our village, 
and Tom Marshall and Eloise Hope—the para¬ 
gon among my girls—became husband and wife. 
Today, Tom is in the ministry, and preaching 
a salvation that has lifted him from the lowest 
to the highest stratum, not only in our village, 
but in all earthly life; for earth has no greater 



LINES OF COMMUNICATION 


87 


royalty anywhere than its self-sacrificing min¬ 
isters of the gospel. 

Truly, Tom was a “diamond in the rough/’ 
but he shines now with an untarnished luster. 
In our Sunday-school classes there may be many 
such “rough diamonds” that only need quarry¬ 
ing and polishing, and God alone knows the pos¬ 
sibilities that are wrapped up in them. “Man 
looketh on the outward appearance, but the 
Lord looketh on the heart.” 


CHAPTER IX 
Where the Boys Helped 

One of the very finest things ever exhibited 
by a Sunday-school class is the loyalty of its 
members—their interest in one another, and 
their concern for one another’s reputation and 
welfare. I have already mentioned that my 
boys served as my aides-de-camp on several 
occasions, but they did not always report to 
me their activities. Sometimes, in their con¬ 
cern for a classmate, they would enlist my 
services, at which times I became more an 
orderly than a major general. 

In my class register I had tabulated Florence 
Jones as “vain and inclined to be silly; needs 
special care and attention.” In our private ses¬ 
sions Florence never took an active part, but 
usually sat quiet with a bored look on her pretty 
face. Had the boys not been serving as my 
faithful helpers, it is possible that at one par¬ 
ticular time in that girl’s career she might have 
very easily gone on the rocks. But the boys 
were “on the job” and carefully frustrated her 
little plan. 

The entire maneuver was accidental. Flor- 


WHERE THE BOYS HELPED 


89 


ence was clerking in the city; and without the 
knowledge of her mother or any of her friends 
she was carrying on a flirtation with a dashing 
elderly lover, whose chief business in life was 
to fritter away time with foolish young girls. 
He was an adept at flattery and all the modern 
arts of flirtation, and poor, silly Florence imag¬ 
ined that she had captivated a rich man. Love 
did not enter into the situation at all, although 
it served as a password. 

It happened that Roy Kramer drove to the 
city and had just parked his car when Clyde 
Simpson, hurrying along the pavement, recog¬ 
nized him. It was summertime, late evening, 
and the electric lights made the city street as 
light as day. Clyde jumped on the running- 
board of Roy’s car, and exclaimed in a breath¬ 
less whisper: 

“ Follow that gray car that just left the curb 
ahead of you!” 

“Jump in,” answered Roy, with his foot 
already on the starter. 

Clyde kept his eyes glued to the gray car as 
together they traversed the city streets, and 
when it swept across the bridge and out toward 
the open country, Roy’s car was following 
closely. 

“Who is in it?” panted Roy in the excitement 
of the chase. 

“Florence Jones and an old guy whose middle 


90 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


name is Devil!” Clyde exclaimed, tempestuous 
as usual. “I happened to see her when she left 
the store, all dolled up to beat the band. She 
didn’t see me, although I walked up the street 
behind her. I stopped to look at some army 
things in a window, when, to my astonishment, 
that car shot up to the curb, the old guy helped 
her in, and they were off. I had some fool 
notion of calling the police, when you providen¬ 
tially hove in sight. Let’s run ’em to earth if 
we have to follow ’em all night.” 

“Sure thing,” agreed Roy, and stepped on the 
accelerator. 

By this time the driver of the gray car seemed 
to have a suspicion that they were being fol¬ 
lowed, for when he slackened speed the black 
car slowed in the rear, or put on a spurt of extra 
speed when the leading machine made a dash 
forward. Then the gray car drew to the side of 
the road, inviting the other to pass. Roy con¬ 
cluded to pass, and in passing Clyde turned the 
spot-light full upon the occupants of the gray 
roadster. 

The movement was so sudden that Florence 
had not sufficient time to cover her face, al¬ 
though she turned aside quickly. She spoke to 
her companion, and the gray car immediately 
reversed and fled back toward the city. Roy 
and Clyde turned at once, also, and the chase 
continued, up one street and down another, and 


WHERE THE ROYS HELPED 91 

with little cross-country runs, until the driver 
of the roadster, becoming convinced that his 
game was up for that night at least, turned up 
an avenue and came to a stop before the house 
where Florence was staying during her sojourn 
in the city. The boys, still on duty, passed 
them, turned about and stopped with their head¬ 
lights focused on the occupants of the other car. 

For a moment Florence waited, then climbed 
out of the car with a rush and fled up the steps 
to the house. When the gray car again swung 
into action, the boys followed closely, again up 
one street and down another, until finally, con¬ 
vinced that he could not elude their vigilance, 
the driver of the roadster turned into a garage 
and the car was stored for the night. Then, and 
only then, did the boys conclude that their work 
was done. 

A few days later, Mr. and Mrs. Jones drove 
into town and when they returned to our vil¬ 
lage they had with them their foolish, mis¬ 
guided daughter, and all of her luggage. Evi¬ 
dently Roy and Clyde, through the medium of 
Florence’s brothers, had spoiled some of the 
girl’s little plans, but she has every reason today 
to thank those loyal classmates for their unwel¬ 
come escort. 

* * * * * 

Some of the events of real life can hardly be 
duplicated in fiction, and as a Sunday-school 


92 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


teacher of long experience I have found some of 
the incidents along life’s way truly marvelous. 
Today, when I think of the name of Duane 
Hopper it is with a little thrill of surprise and of 
consternation, although it is years since I have 
seen him. 

Duane came into our village as a young lum¬ 
berman of the better class. He was fine-looking, 
even picturesque in appearance: for with the 
brown of the lumberman’s garb, he wore a flow¬ 
ing red tie, and high-topped laced boots. He 
did not attend our class sessions of the Sunday- 
school very often, but he attached himself to 
nearly all of our class affairs, and was usually 
to be found in the church congregation every 
Sunday night. 

He had been with us quite a long time, nearly 
all winter, and in the spring, when logging oper¬ 
ations ceased, he entered the employ of my hus¬ 
band, and became quite intimate with all of my 
young people, although he was older than the 
majority of them at that time. I always 
mounted guard over my girls at all times, and 
felt intuitively that Duane Hopper’s associa¬ 
tion with them might be marked dangerous. I 
felt that I could not trust him to any extent. 
His ideals were distorted, and his methods not 
always honest. “ Everything is all right if you 
can get away with it,” was his logic. So I 
marked him dangerous, and watched. As good 


WHERE THE BOYS HELPED 


93 


fortune would have it, he spread his attentions 
over my class of girls quite liberally, without 
any partiality, so my task was simplified to some 
extent at least. By this time he was on the best 
of terms with all of us. 

We were having pre-Easter services in the 
church that year, and one night Duane Hopper 
with another flashy young man, a stranger, and 
two overdressed and painted girls, also strangers, 
created quite a sensation in our quiet little 
church. That night Duane, who had been stay¬ 
ing at our home, did not come in, and he did 
not report for work the next day. Every night 
he was at the church with his friends, and the 
quartette made themselves very conspicuous 
and obnoxious. We learned that the four were 
staying at the dismantled lumber-camp. This 
went on for a week, then the gay friends took 
their departure back to the city, and Duane 
returned to us quite as if nothing had happened. 
At our class party he made himself very free 
with my girls, and I felt that a moral leper was 
among us, and that he in no wise considered 
himself unclean. 

I am sure it was the hardest task I have ever 
undertaken, but I called that young man to me, 
and told him frankly that I considered him unfit 
to mingle with my pure young girls. If he should 
ever manifest any sign of repentance, any desire 
to live a better life, I stood ready to help him, 


94 


i 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


I told him, but until that time should come, he 
had no further place among us. 

He was greatly surprised, apparently, and 
very, very angry. I was very much disturbed 
and grieved; but I talked plainly and did not in 
any way gloss over his behavior. I spent much 
of that night in prayer, my heart heavy with 
its burden. 

Our regular minister had an evangelist help¬ 
ing him in the meetings, and a few days later 
this brother called upon me in my home. I was 
entertaining him by showing him some books 
in my library, when the maid announced that 
there was a gentleman who wished to see me. 
Leaving the evangelist in the library, I stepped 
into the living room just as Duane Hopper ad¬ 
vanced to meet me from the other end of the room. 

I had never seen him look so serious. He held 
out his hand in greeting, and remarked enig¬ 
matically, “Well, I’ve ‘done gone and done it!’ ” 

“Done what?” I questioned in surprise. 

“I married her.” 

“What—what did you say?” My limbs al¬ 
most collapsed under me and I sat down quickly, 
and motioned him to a chair. 

“I married her,” he said again in the same 
flat tone of monotony. 

“Why did you do that?” I asked him, my 
breathing having become normal once more. 

“Only thing I could do and be decent,” he 


WHERE THE BOYS HELPED 


95 


answered with a wry smile. “It’s funny, but I 
never saw myself before at all until you thrust 
your hand glass under my nose last Friday 
night. I’ve been doing this thing right along 
and kind o’ thought it rather smart until you 
came along and took the wind out of my sails. 
I married her. She is no worse than I am, and 
we have made up our minds to start the clean 
life together. Your words struck pretty deep, 
and I told her all you said. That’s all, and we 
are married—not by a justice of the peace, but 
by a bona-fide preacher.” 

He went on then to make quite a full confes¬ 
sion. When he had finished, I said, “Start the 
life right, Duane; take God into your life. It 
is hard to reform in your own strength. Bring 
your wife to me, perhaps I can help her.” 

When he had gone, I turned to the library. 
The evangelist was standing on his feet, and tears 
were in his eyes. “I heard,” he said, “every 
word of that conversation—could not help it. 
It is the most astonishing thing I ever heard of.” 

Astonishing? I have not recovered from the 
wonder of it even yet. Duane kept his word and 
brought his wife to me, and I had the pleasure of 
helping them walk along the path of rectitude 
for a little while at least. I do not know what 
sort of a life they are living, for they went away 
soon afterward; but at the last report that I had 
from them, they were still living together. 


CHAPTER X 
The High School Dance 

This system of work that I have been advo¬ 
cating for Sunday-school teachers is at no time 
easy. It is interesting, and pays large divi¬ 
dends in fellowship and the joy of Christian 
service, but it is not a “ flowery bed of ease.” 
There comes a time to the teen-age teacher in 
rural schools when her most promising pupils 
go away to high school in some distant city. 
The consolidation of public schools will some 
time eliminate this difficulty, no doubt, but we 
face the situation yet quite generally. 

Many of our students have gone away to high 
school and have made good; others have not. 
These latter ones have paid a fearful price some¬ 
times for their education. At the most suscep¬ 
tible time of their existence they are thrust out 
from sheltered homes into new and strange sur¬ 
roundings, to choose their companions and de¬ 
cide things for themselves. A student house in 
connection with a high school would be a fine 
thing for out-of-town young people and would 
equalize expenses. There would need to be a 
good matron at its head, with home rules for 

96 


THE HIGH SCHOOL DANCE 


97 


hours and conduct, and kitchenettes where 
students could prepare their own meals if neces¬ 
sary. Such an arrangement would ease the care 
of mother hearts by giving protection to their 
children; but where they stay at ordinary 
boarding houses they go and come as they 
please, and with whom they please, and where 
they please, and no one is the wiser. A girl of 
fourteen needs her mother, or a foster-mother, 
hardly less than does a child four years of age. 

In our village, our high school students spent 
the week-ends at home, so that I had them in 
class on Sunday usually, but from Monday 
morning, and often from Sunday afternoon, 
until Friday evening, they were in the city and 
away from home influences. The few who were 
obliged to work their way through school were 
home less often, but they did well, as a rule, as 
they had less leisure time in which to get into 
mischief. Of course, the real student is likely 
to get along well anyway, for he is anxious to 
improve every moment, and his books claim his 
attention; but we have had several young- 
people who have attended high school simply for 
the love of change and variety, and their am¬ 
bition ran no farther than to have a good time. 

The bane of our city high school was its 
dances. It was a fine educational institution; 
none better in the state; but on the floor of its 
gymnasium were taught and practiced all the 


98 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


latest new steps, trots, and bunny-hugs that 
Satan has invented. The high school dance 
proved a greater snare than our old notorious 
dance hall; for it drew in the best young people, 
and the few who had sufficient courage to resist 
its allurement were slyly ridiculed. 

Isabel Moore fell a victim to the high school 
dance. In order to dance at all she must break 
all the rules and regulations of her home teach¬ 
ing, and when once started on the downward 
incline her descent was rapid; for she defied all 
law, whether conventional, parental, or ecclesi¬ 
astical. Her visits home were few and far be¬ 
tween and of short duration; for her parents 
strenuously objected to her line of conduct and 
refused to finance her education, hoping to 
force her into submission. But the girl was very 
bright, as well as attractive, and she managed 
to get along. After two years of high school she 
went into office work, and never again did she 
resume her membership in my class. 

I did not let her go lightly; I did all I could 
by way of letters, private visits, etc., but she 
eluded and ignored all my attempts to guide 
her, and went her own heedless way until her 
reputation was in tatters. Today she is reaping 
the whirlwind of her folly, and in a distant city, 
far from home and friends, she is trying to gain 
back the priceless heritage of her womanhood, 
which in the stubbornness and ignorance of her 


THE HIGH SCHOOL DANCE 


99 


youth she ruthlessly threw away. My faithful boy 
scouts warned me when Isabel first began to drift, 
and I in turn warned her mother; but the Moores, 
though very pious, were proud and resented any 
interference, as they called it, in their family af¬ 
fairs; so my work with Isabel was handicapped 
on every side. However, had she remained in our 
village I am quite confident that I could have 
reached her; but as it was I have been obliged to 
look on my work in her behalf as an utter failure 
so far as her young womanhood is concerned, at 
least. Yet God has said that “His Word should 
not return unto Him void,” and possibly in some 
manner the seed that was sown in her heart will 
yet grow and ripen for eternity. 

* * * * * 

Sadly we teachers must record the failures 
along with our successes. Perhaps if we were 
always successful, we would become egotistical 
and lose out in the line of effort. Another failure 
that I must chronicle is the story of Martha 
Boyer, my pretty, flirtatious little Mattie. She 
was such a happy-go-lucky, irresponsible child; 
and she must not be judged too harshly, for she 
lost her mother in her early childhood, and with 
an older sister in the home Mattie flew about 
the village as carefree as a bird. She was very 
bright and enjoyed her school work and gradu¬ 
ated from the eighth grade while unusually 


100 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


young. I rejoiced in her success, yet, when her 
going away from us to attend high school began 
to be freely discussed, I felt very much con¬ 
cerned about her future. But there was no help 
for it, all the argument was in favor of her 
educational advantage, of course, and she went 
out from us. I did what I could to prepare her 
for the new life, but with her love for fun and 
frolic it seemed almost impossible to get her to 
think seriously on any subject. 

Mr. Boyer was a stern, quiet man and had no 
patience whatever with Mattie’s pranks; the 
other daughter was much older and very sedate, 
and she, too, failed her sister when it came to 
sympathy and understanding. Mr. Boyer felt 
that he had fulfilled every known duty toward 
Mattie when he had arranged for her books and 
tuition, and saw her installed in a private board¬ 
ing house. Poor little motherless girlie! She 
was altogether too young to be thrust out from 
the home nest without a guardian near her. 
There are many who are ready to criticize and 
condemn young girls, very few to help them 
rectify early mistakes, and when once fully 
started on the toboggan slide of public disfavor, 
the descent soon becomes rapid enough to suit 
any old scandalmonger. 

I tried to keep up a correspondence with 
Mattie, and I tried to warn her against the ques¬ 
tionable amusement of the high school dance; but 


THE HIGH SCHOOL DANCE 


101 


“ everybody is doing it,” she wrote me, “and back 
in our village we are too old-fashioned for any¬ 
thing. I don’t want to be called a back number.” 

She did not keep up her end of the correspond¬ 
ence very long. Movies, beaux, joyrides, dances, 
rouge, powder, lip sticks, eyebrow pencils—the 
whole paraphernalia of modern foolishness took 
up her spare moments, and left no time for her 
to write a letter, except to ask her poor old 
father for an occasional check to supplement her 
usual allowance. She got through the first 
semester unscathed, but her associations were 
formed—associations that were to darken, and 
finally blight, her high school career. 

During the next six months things began to 
happen; Mattie was the favorite of a lively 
crowd; a ringleader and yet a dupe. She 
changed her boarding place about every new 
moon, sometimes because she wished the change, 
and at other times, I suspect, because she was 
asked to move by an exasperated landlady. 
Rumors began to circulate, first in whispers, 
then openly. Mattie seemed perfectly imper¬ 
vious to public opinion. She defied ordinary 
conventions and laughed when people remon¬ 
strated with her. She gained in favor with a 
certain crowd, for she excelled in wit and repar¬ 
tee. I am quite sure she did not intend going so 
far in her free-and-easy life, but when she found 
she was being talked about, she grew defiant 


102 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


rather than scared. She went to further extremes, 
only to find herself suddenly ostracized from the 
society of many of her classmates. 

Even then she did not heed the warning, and 
made no effort to change her ways, but she 
became bitter toward her would-be friends, 
imagined herself abused, and blamed other 
people for what was really the result of her own 
recklessness. But we must remember that 
Mattie had no mother, and no one near her 
interested enough in her welfare to teach and 
guide her, and the folks who tried to warn her 
did so in a manner that repelled rather than 
attracted her. I am not trying to excuse her 
conduct, but I want her to have full justice at 
the bar of human judgment. She was so young, 
yet large for her age, healthy and strong; her 
lessons were learned easily, and her marks 
would have been excellent had her conduct been 
more satisfactory; as it was, she came very near 
being expelled from school for being disorderly. 

But—she had no mother. She was far ad¬ 
vanced on the down grade when the disturbing 
rumors began to circulate in our village. I made 
a trip to the city especially to see her—for she 
spent her vacations visiting about among her 
friends—but she put up a fine game of bluff and 
repelled my advances. I wrote appeal after 
appeal of love and counsel, and succeeded in 
getting quite a grip on her for a time, but the 


THE HIGH SCHOOL DANCE 


103 


whirlpool of folly proved too rapid for me and she 
slipped away. I presume her false friends ridi¬ 
culed me as a “ meddlesome old puritan/’ for the 
attention she gave me savored of boredom. 

By and by her folly began to bear fruit; and 
whirling about in the eddy of her wild life she 
became stranded on a reef, and began to be for¬ 
saken by the gay friends who had helped in her 
ruin. Still she fought and struggled against my 
influence, her faith in humanity utterly shaken. 
She had lost hope as well as virtue; carnality 
ruled in her small world, and even good inten¬ 
tions were regarded with suspicion. The reali¬ 
ties of life suddenly loomed before her in all their 
hideousness; romance was a myth, and the 
future a black horror. Finally, when she was 
left almost alone in the ocean of her despair and 
floating around like a bit of driftwood, I suc¬ 
ceeded in getting another grip on her, yet she 
dodged behind a refuge of falsehoods and made 
much trouble for herself as well as for me before 
I managed to get her to shore. I was forced to 
resort to cruelly plain language and harsh meas¬ 
ures before I could make that girl really see 
herself as she was, so completely was she de¬ 
ceived by the sophistries of the crowd with 
whom she had associated. To her distorted 
vision black was white, and white was black; 
there was nothing out of the ordinary in the way 
she had lived; she was the victim of an accident, 


104 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


that was all. My dealing with her at this time 
was decidedly unpleasant for all concerned. I 
was forced to run to earth many of her false¬ 
hoods ; but through it all she knew in her inner¬ 
most consciousness that I loved her and that 
my love would not let her go. She was saved 
at last after a fearful struggle. Today Mattie 
is paying the price of her folly, for society frowns 
on a tarnished name. But she was well worth 
saving; well worth all the months of anxiety 
and effort which were spent in her behalf. She 
is a fine, strong woman now, and has entered 
social work, hoping to save other girls from fall¬ 
ing as she fell; but especially interested in lift¬ 
ing others who have already slipped over the 
brink. In this, she will do better than I have 
ever been able to do, for she knows whereof she 
speaks, and has drained the cup of knowledge, 
of sorrow, and suffering, down to the bitter dregs. 

She is like a “bird with a broken pinion” and 
can never hope to attain to lofty heights in an 
earthly altitude, for memories of the past will 
ever rise to check her flight, and the world does 
not forget; but 

The bird with a broken pinion kept another from the snare, 
And the life that sin had stricken raised another from 
despair; 

Each loss has its own compensation, there is healing for 
each pain, 

But the bird with a broken pinion never soars as high 
again. 


CHAPTER XI 
Blackballed 

Would that I might write that all of my 
splendid class of young people ultimately be¬ 
came Christians. Many of them are Christians, 
thank God, and several of them are engaged in 
definite Christian work, preaching and teaching 
the gospel; but there are others for whom my 
heart still yearns, who have never yet to my 
knowledge accepted Christ as their personal 
Saviour. In some cases unchristian homes and 
unchristian environment did much to hinder. 
But I early learned that the result of my work 
I must leave to a higher power; my task was 
to do the sowing in that portion of the field con¬ 
signed to my care. I have had no time to worry 
over the outcome, for worry only cripples effort. 

It is true that my work has been hindered by 
adverse criticism. It has not always been un¬ 
derstood, and often not appreciated. The great¬ 
est cross I have had to bear is to know that 
certain other Christian workers in our com¬ 
munity have misunderstood and misjudged my 
motives. I had hard situations to face without, 
as well as within, my class. I readily admit that 

105 


106 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


I had several young men under my watch-care 
who were far from saintly, as well as several 
young girls who were frivolous and flighty. 
Some critical ones called them the “black’’ 
sheep of our flock, but even so I have never 
found any Biblical authority for discarding 
them. 

My young folks were at that time too young 
to be utterly depraved, even the wildest of 
them. My girls were at the silly stage of life 
when they were emotional naturally, and my 
boys were more mischievous than actually 
wicked. They were at the “fork in the road” 
—the critical time in their lives, when a word 
one way or the other might mean a life’s decision. 

I have already mentioned George North. He 
was, indeed, a veritable “imp of mischief”; yet 
he was very tender-hearted. He loved animals 
and little children. It is true that he seemed to 
be very weak-willed, and was called “tricky.” 
The beginning of his life had been unfortunate; 
his babyhood was spent in a state institution for 
dependent children, his early boyhood passed in 
wandering from home to home as a bit of public 
property without any particular guidance or 
training. By and by, after he was about ten or 
eleven years old, he was adopted by a childless 
couple in our village and came to live among us. 
As a child he was lovable, quick-witted, and very 
intelligent. As he grew older he spent his time 


BLACKBALLED 


107 


around lumber camps, where he gained a fund 
of knowledge not at all adapted to the needs of 
a growing boy, and later fell in with the crowd 
that patronized our disreputable dance hall. He 
attended our class sessions very irregularly until 
he was about twenty years old, when he allied 
himself closely to all of our class activities, and 
never missed a Sunday service at the church if 
he could help it. He was almost as steadily 
first a church convert, and then a backslider, as 
Edna Ross herself, yet he seemed more likely to 
overcome eventually his backsliding habit. 

George had many good qualities, and people 
generally liked him. He was always very good 
to me, especially when I was serving as class 
chaperon during class outings, and other occa¬ 
sions. People said he was not dependable, but 
I could depend upon him to follow every require¬ 
ment of our class by-laws, although his mischief- 
loving propensity gave me more trouble than all 
the pranks of the others combined; yet often he 
came to me and penitently asked pardon for his 
misdemeanors. He was a bundle of contradic¬ 
tions, all right enough, but I really liked him. 
I have seen him weep over his sins, yet go away 
and repeat them. The village people finally lost 
faith in him, and the church folks gave him up 
as incorrigible. Stories were circulated about 
him—stories of gambling, of petty stealing, and 
a drunken bout or two. Probably some of the 


108 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


stories had a legitimate foundation, and no 
doubt some of them were exaggerated; but he 
began to drift more rapidly when he discovered 
that the church people had quite generally given 
him up as a hopeless case. 

“I am not wanted in this church/’ George 
said to me at one time when I was endeavoring 
to instill a little courage into him. “Some of 
your proud ‘pillars’ question my pedigree, and 
others have openly told me that I was ‘bound 
for the infernal regions’ in a tone that suggested 
that they would be greatly disappointed if I 
failed to arrive there.” 

“Jesus said, ‘Whosoever,’ and He is not con¬ 
cerned about your personal lineage, for He re¬ 
members that we all originated from common 
dust,” I told him quietly. “You have one 
Judge, even God, and to Him you must answer, 
not to folks.” 

He tried again, only to slip back. Had he 
been of stronger fiber he might have reinstated 
himself in the favor of his critics, but there was 
a weak link in his life-chain, and his better 
nature always broke at that one link. I con¬ 
tinued to hope that sometime we might be able 
to make a spiritual welding that would stand 
the test, but—I am still hoping. 

My heart aches as I remember the young 
fellow as he was at that time. He had so many 
good qualities, and some natural refinement, and 


BLACKBALLED 


109 


he was not yet old enough to be cast out as evil. 
Yet he complicated my work, for I had a lot of 
susceptible young girls in my class whom I must 
guard against possible complications as the 
result of our close association with him. 

During these days, and while trying to cling 
to him with one hand, I felt it necessary for me 
to warn my girls, and keep them posted as to 
his real character. He was fine-looking and gen¬ 
tlemanly in his conduct, always displaying those 
little courtesies that appeal to the feminine 
mind, and I did not want one of my dear girls 
to shipwreck her life in any entanglement with 
him. “Forewarned” is “forearmed” in most 
cases, provided one forewarns early enough-— 
before glamour has misplaced good judgment. 
Yet George was not the “moral snare” that 
some good people called him. He was really in 
love with one of my girls, and I knew it. The 
girl—unfortunately for George—happened to be 
Eloise Hope; and Eloise at that time was 
absorbed in her studies, and thought more of 
her books than she did of any young man. 
Indeed, at that time, we could only think of 
Eloise as a teacher climbing the pedagogical 
ladder that reaches to a professor’s chair. We 
never thought of her as destined to become a 
minister’s wife, although she possessed a fund 
of sympathy and other qualities well adapted to 
the position she finally chose for her life-work. 


110 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


George loved her so sincerely that I some¬ 
times think if he had only succeeded in winning 
her favor, perhaps his entire life might have 
changed very materially; she would have fur¬ 
nished the stamina, or backbone, which he cer¬ 
tainly lacked. But Fate willed it otherwise 
without any of my meddling, for it was a one¬ 
sided love affair from the very beginning. But 
I presume it all helped to “ break ” George. His 
lapses became more frequent, and finally he was 
arrested on a serious charge and sent to jail. It 
was a severe strain on my faith in him, and my 
hope wavered; but I visited him in the prison, 
and again offered him encouragement and 
sympathy. 

“Fm bad'enough, God knows,” he told me, 
“but I’m not guilty of the thing they have 
charged against me.” 

His words rang true, and I believed him. I 
believe still that he was not guilty—that time 
at least—but his darkening reputation and evil 
associations helped to fasten the blame upon 
him in the eyes of the people. However, at the 
trial the charge was not proven against him and 
he was released. But the stigma of it clung to 
him and our village flatly refused to further 
accept him on any terms whatever. He became 
a social outcast, ostracized from all society save 
that of the dance-hall crowd, and George’s ambi¬ 
tions soared higher than that; he grew bitter 


BLACKBALLED 


111 


and atheistic; and, as is usual with the trans¬ 
gressor, blamed everything and everybody but 
himself. Only two people in the community 
seemed to retain any faith in him; his dear old 
foster-mother and his Sunday-school teacher; 
but we were not sufficiently strong to hold him. 
He had come to our village as a waif from the 
great world; he returned again to its turbulent 
sea, and if he is ever saved it will probably be 
through the good offices of that noble institu¬ 
tion, the Salvation Army, 


CHAPTER XII 

Seeking Strayed Ones 

It would seem that among Christians, at 
least, there should be one standard of life for 
both sexes—the same truths relating to clean¬ 
ness of thought, and of speech, and of conduct 
taught to both boys and girls. Teen-age 
teachers in the Sunday-school have a great 
opportunity, if they will take it, to come to the 
moral support of our young people. For the 
young men there is a move in the right direc¬ 
tion brought about by the situations revealed in 
the late war, but the girls are being too much 
neglected. If we are to judge by feminine ap¬ 
parel and language seen and heard in public 
places, we must conclude that there is a lower¬ 
ing of feminine ideals. Mothers are apparently 
too busy in these swift days properly to teach 
their daughters, while the latter are learning fast 
and harmfully from other sources. 

Many a girl does not care enough for light 
literature to bother to read it, but both the 
reader and the one who cares nothing for it are 
caught by the dramatic action of questionable 
deeds as portrayed by the moving-picture show. 

112 


SEEKING STRAYED ONES 


113 


There they are apt to see life presented in false 
colors, and sin’s after-effects seductively con¬ 
cealed. Much of the bravado we see among our 
youth today can probably be traced to this 
source. From an educational standpoint there 
is unquestionably a great power for good in 
moving pictures, but when they gild vice and 
exploit the methods of lawlessness there is need 
of united effort to remove the evil influences so 
injurious to the moral life of our young people. 

I believe our girls are in even greater danger 
than our boys from this source. Boys, as a rule, 
dislike what they call “mush and gush”; but 
girls, also as a rule, with their different temper¬ 
ament, are caught by the romance and fail to 
realize the evil. Nine times out of ten a girl is 
influenced through her affections. She wants to 
love and be loved. This love element in her 
character may prove to be her weakness, or it 
may be made a power for tremendous good. 
Much, therefore, depends upon her training, her 
associations, her environment, during the ado¬ 
lescent years of the teen-age period. 

Oh, the sad confessions that have come to me 
from girls who, at a critical time in their young 
lives, have needed mothering, care, and under¬ 
standing, mingled with sympathy. They needed 
love, and received indifference. One girl told 
me she had already strayed, and was telling me 
the whys and wherefores of her case: “I always 


114 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


wanted someone to love me. Mother died when 
I was a little girl, and I remember many a time 
trying to climb up on father’s lap and coaxing 
him to love and caress me. But he usually 
pushed me off: ‘Run along now, father is busy.’ 
He had time to read, play games, or visit with 
his friends; but no time to bother with me. 
I’ve been hungry for love all my life; and when 
it was finally offered me, I was willing to pay 
almost any price to get it, and a double price 
to hold it.” 

Poor deluded child. No one had ever taught 
her the difference between love and lust, and 
how was she to know that the thing offered her 
in sugar-coated doses would poison her? Here 
is where the women of the Church must assume 
responsibility. Sometimes we call an unfortu¬ 
nate girl depraved when she is only deceived. 
In the course of my work I have met the 
depraved kind, and it was not a pleasant experi¬ 
ence, but at least I did not leave any of them 
until assured that they were actually depraved, 
and past any desire for redemption. For such 
a one there is no hope until we can awaken the 
slumbering conscience, and even then, some¬ 
times, she will of her own volition deliberately 
return to “the mire.” Fallen womanhood must 
needs pass a solid phalanx of pointing fingers in 
order to regain her heritage; many a time, 
indeed, she is pushed backward by a Pharisaic 


SEEKING STRAYED ONES 


115 


world; but God forbid that any Sunday-school 
teacher should ever, even indirectly, push a soul 
downward. 

I was visiting once in a certain city, and in 
the home where I was being entertained there 
was a young man boarding, in whom I became 
much interested. He was a likable young 
fellow, but he seemed so bitter and atheistic for 
one of his years. Human enigmas always inter¬ 
est me and I have a very special liking for boys. 
What puzzled me most was the fact that this 
young man was friendly with me until he learned 
that I was a church worker and Sunday-school 
teacher, and then his attitude toward me be¬ 
came almost openly hostile. Indeed, he was so 
changed in manner that I cornered him one day 
and demanded a reason; then he told me his 
story: 

It seems that a family of four—father, mother, 
this young man, and his sister—at one time 
lived in a certain small town and attended a 
certain church, but were not churchmembers. 
When the boy was eighteen years of age and 
his sister fourteen, the parents died quite sud¬ 
denly, within a year of each other. The funeral 
expenses ate up their little savings, and it was 
decided that the boy and girl should continue 
to live together, but both work for a living. The 
boy secured a position in a machine shop, and 
the girl, who should have been in school, went 


116 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


to work in a department store. The inevitable 
happened: the girl, large for her age, and fine- 
looking, soon put up her hair and assumed the 
appearance of a young lady. When she was 
fifteen years old she was already regarded as 
“wild.” Yet she was only trying to have a 
good time, and nobody seemed concerned about 
the motherless child. I interrupted the story 
to ask: “Didn’t she have a Sunday-school 
teacher?” 

“Yes, but after mother died Jean didn’t go 
regularly, and after she began to be talked about 
folks snubbed her, and she quit going to church 
and Sunday-school.” 

Then he went on to tell of his own concern 
for his sister, how he tried to control her, and 
how he “thrashed” boys who said anything 
against her. “Jean didn’t mean to be bad,” he 
assured me earnestly. “She just didn’t know, 
and she wanted to have a good time, and she 
thought it was smart to be sporty. Folks 
haven’t much patience with such a girl; they’ll 
talk about her, but they won’t lift a finger to 
help her. Then Jean fell in love—or thought 
she did—with a fellow that sang in the choir of 
the church where we used to go, and she took 
up religion again. The fellow was most too 
slick to suit me, but he hung around a good 
deal, and Jean and I had many a word fight 
over him. His mother was a proud dame, and 


SEEKING STRAYED ONES 


117 


she treated Jean to cold looks at first, and then 
to some pretty cold lectures when she stopped 
to see her while shopping at the store. Jean 
was such a young kid, and mighty pretty, but 
with her hair dolled up she passed for seven¬ 
teen. I used to wish some woman would take 
a hand in her case, but none did, so I just tried 
to shut my eyes and hope for the best. 

“But—she got into trouble. Then I went to 
that woman, that proud church dame, and told 
her about my sister. She shut the door in my 
face; then I went to some of the Sunday-school 
teachers and they told me about maternity hos¬ 
pitals, and organized charity work, but not one 
of them offered to do anything personal for my 
sister. She was one of a common herd to them, 
but all I had in this world to me. It seemed to 
me at that time that all those churchwomen 
massed together to push poor Jean overboard. 
After a while I gave up trying to get help, and 
made up my mind to take care of Jean myself. 
She mourned for the fellow who had deserted 
her more than she did over her trouble. I had 
him prosecuted, but his father paid over a sum 
of money and hushed up the affair. I would 
rather have worked my fingers to the bone than 
have taken that money, but I had to for Jean’s 
sake. 

“She was sick at the hospital, and the baby 
died. Then Jean came back to me, but she 


118 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


drooped more and more each day, and finally 
she, too, died. When she was dead—would you 
believe it?—that bunch of women came to see 
her and brought a great big bouquet of red roses 
to lay on her coffin. I shut the door in their 
faces,” he concluded grimly. “Jean alive was an 
object of derision; but Jean dead was an object 
of pity. The time had gone by for helping her, 
and we could get along without their roses.” 

What could I say in the face of such an experi¬ 
ence; how convince him that the Christ-love 
was still manifest in His church, the Bride of 
the Lamb? 

We consider the sin of adultery to be the 
lowest in the scale of human degeneracy, but a 
smaller sin may shut us out of heaven. “I was 
an hungered and ye gave me no meat.” The 
Bible has its signboards of warnings all along 
the way. As Sunday-school teachers we some¬ 
times forget that we are to be the “sowers” of 
the Word, not the “harvesters.” The harvest 
belongs to God, and the reapers are the angels. 

We must not only sow the seed, but cultivate 
it. We are not accountable, nor blamed, for the 
condition of the soil of the human heart, whether 
it be light, sandy, or stony; neither are we to be 
blamed that Satan’s emissaries, like evil birds, fly 
through the air seeking to devour the precious 
grain. If we teachers never sow until soil con¬ 
ditions please our fancy, many of us will be 


SEEKING STRAYED ONES 


119 


unable to produce sheaves for the final harvest. 
In the case of poor Jean, it is possible that her 
Sunday-school teacher could not have saved her, 
but the indictment against her is that she evi¬ 
dently did not try. 

* 1 * 4* 

't* *4* 

Sometimes the byways of life run very close 
to our modern church life, which is universally 
considered the ‘ ‘ highway of holiness. ” I remem¬ 
ber at one time being present at a revival meet¬ 
ing in our village when there came into the 
service a young woman of disreputable char¬ 
acter. She took a seat across the aisle from me 
and I noticed that other women quite pointedly 
moved over and away from her. She was accus¬ 
tomed to such maneuvers, of course, and her 
hard face never changed an iota. I’m afraid 
that I lost much of the sermon while I was con¬ 
sidering that woman’s life and possibilities. I 
knew that she attended church occasionally, 
that she was quiet and attentive, rarely spoke 
to anyone and hurried off immediately after the 
benediction. I wondered why she came, what 
the service meant to her, and if any Christian 
had ever talked to her personally of salvation. 
I knew I had not, and I resolved to try, anyway. 
So, watching my chance I intercepted her usual 
quick departure after the service by approaching 
her with extended hand. She drew back, hesi- 


120 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


tated for the fraction of a second, then gave me 
her hand. I did not let it go. 

“Are you satisfied with your life?” I ques¬ 
tioned in a low tone. 

Much to my surprise quick tears came to her 
hard eyes and she said brokenly, “I wake up in 
the night sometimes and I’m afraid.” 

“You poor soul!” I exclaimed in quick sym¬ 
pathy. “Don’t you want to live differently?” 

“I never tried,” she answered. “I never had 
no show. I was born in this kind of a life. I was 
raised in it; I don’t know any other.” 

It was my eyes which filled with tears at that 
statement. Ah, thank God for clean home en¬ 
vironment! I had never included that when 
“counting my blessings” heretofore. 

“Would you like to live differently?” I asked 
her. 

“I can’t; don’t know how.” Her tone was 
absolutely hopeless. 

“I’ll help you,” I urged. “See, here is my 
hand. God will forgive you if you ask Him. 
He will help you, and I’ll do what I can for 
you.” 

She shook her head. “I can’t live that life; 
there’s too many to kick me down. They would 
consider my religion a new kind of joke.” 

“But after a time you would prove the hon¬ 
esty of your intentions and people would then 
be willing to help you,” I argued. 


SEEKING STRAYED ONES 


121 


“I have no friends among the church folks,” 
she objected. 

“ But I am ready right now to be your friend,” 
I insisted. “I cannot follow you in your present 
life, but if you are willing to turn from it, Fll 
stand by until you are able to stand upon your 
feet and look the world in the face. Don’t you 
believe it?” 

She was silent a monent while looking me 
steadily in the eye. I met her challenge squarely 
and smiled encouragement while I pressed the 

hand I held. 

Again her eyes filled with tears. “I believe 
you,” she said at last. “You would stand by.” 

“Then begin the new life tonight,” I 
whispered. 

But she shook her head and only promised to 
think about it. She did not return to the church 
again after that night, and a few days later, in 
company with my pastor and his wife, I visited 
her in her home. Conditions were unspeakable. 
Filth and clutter of every description obstructed 
our way. Over it all she surveyed us with a 
stony stare, even refusing to speak to the min¬ 
ister and his wife—seemed even to hesitate about 
admitting us. But she was kind to me, and fi¬ 
nally granted the privilege of our having prayer 
in her room. She would not talk, neither would 
she kneel. She simply endured us because of the 
bit of kindness I had shown to her. She had 


122 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


evidently decided that it was no use; she had 
gone too far on the down grade to retrace her 
steps. To all appearances she is still living a life 
of sin, for she is an outcast from all decent 
society; but I have the consciousness that I did 
what I could, and perhaps even yet, some day, 
that poor soul may be reclaimed. 

I meet her occasionally upon the street. 
Sometimes she answers my greeting, more times 
she does not. When she does not, she contrives 
to make me feel that it is not for my good; that, 
in the parlance of the world, the gulf between 
a good woman and a bad one cannot be bridged. 

But to her credit be it said that she received 
my overtures kindly. I have made similar ef¬ 
forts in other cases and been ridiculed by the 
very person whom I was trying to help. Such 
an experience is never pleasant to recall, but I 
remember one girl in particular whom I was 
able to help in an ordinary way at one time 
during a bereavement. Death had terrified her; 
a fearful sorrow had torn her heart. While her 
plans were running smoothly, she had been cold, 
flippant, and unapproachable. But the sudden 
death of a loved one scared and humbled her. 
In her extremity I was able to reach her, and 
by the side of that cold, silent form she turned 
to me for solace and comfort. She promised to 
leave the old life and build anew while she yet 
possessed youth and health. 


SEEKING STRAYED ONES 


123 


In the few days following the funeral I rather 
think she did make an effort to reconstruct her 
life on new lines; but the pull of old associates 
proved too strong, the new life too tame after 
the midnight revels to which she had been accus¬ 
tomed, and she slipped back. She became de¬ 
fiant at first, then openly scornful. She ridi¬ 
culed the church and its ministry, and laughed 
at what she called our snobbishness and hypoc¬ 
risy. She seemed as hard and unfeeling as a 
stone. She became even blasphemous in her 
assertions. “I am not afraid to die; I am just 
as sure of heaven as you are,” she flippantly 
told me. I could not comprehend the attitude 
of that girl, who was notoriously wild, until 
there flashed through my mind one of Solomon’s 
proverbs: “She eateth and wipeth her mouth 
and saith, ‘I have done no wickedness.’” 

Almost every community contains one or 
more of these “lost sheep,” and many of them 
may prefer to remain “lost” to the end of life’s 
chapter; but the chances are that in the begin¬ 
ning of their downward career, doubtless during 
teen-age years, many of them might be rescued. 
If we limit our work to a twenty-minute lesson 
period every seven days and are concerned only 
with people who come to us voluntarily, the 
chances are that many precious ones are going 
to slip by. It is human nature to choose the 
“path of least resistance,” and the highways of 


124 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


life will be preferred by the majority of workers; 
but the byways must not be neglected. Scoffs 
and sneers may await the humble worker, but 
the command of the Lord means more to a 
faithful disciple than the criticism of men or the 
jeers of demons. 

Such peculiar things happen in real life some¬ 
times that we are convinced that, indeed, 
“truth is stranger than fiction.” At a teachers’ 
luncheon several interesting experiences were 
related, and a teacher, well-known in our part 
of the world, told of many personal experiences, 
some of them ludicrous in the extreme, others 
very pathetic. One story in particular that she 
evidently classified as ludicrous appealed to me 
as extremely pathetic. As she told it in her 
sprightly way it struck a comic cord, and pro¬ 
duced a laugh, but after all it was tragedy. 

A great revival was stirring her town at the 
time, she told us; people everywhere were con¬ 
victed of sin, and many were seeking righteous¬ 
ness. She, although a Sunday-school teacher, 
was not particularly interested in the move¬ 
ment, and one Thursday afternoon in the re¬ 
fined seclusion of her own home she was enter¬ 
taining her Shakespeare club, when the maid 
informed her that a strange caller had gained 
entrance to the house and positively refused to 
be ejected until she had had a word with the 
mistress. Mrs. G. described the poor creature 


SEEKING STRAYED ONES 


125 


at length as a young woman either desperate or 
despairing, but probably deranged. 

When Mrs. G. went to meet her, the strange 
caller hastened forward, and with outstretched 
hands said, “Fm a poor lost soul; can you help 
me?” 

As the story was recounted in our hearing 
there were many exclamations, but the chorus 
centered on, “What did you do?” 

11 What did I do? I went at once to the telephone 
and called up the police. When I returned to the 
room where I had left the girl, she had hastily 
departed, having probably overheard my part of 
the telephone conversation. The next morning 
her dead body was found floating in the Bay in¬ 
side the breakwater. I recognized the newspaper 
description of her at once. I knew all the while 
that she was mentally unbalanced, of course.” 

Mrs. G. was probably correct in her descrip¬ 
tion and analysis of the case; but from what I 
know personally of other similar cases of heart¬ 
break and despair, it is possible that the poor 
girl summed up her own needs in the few words 
she uttered that savored so much of either fa¬ 
naticism or other mental derangement, and may 
have been suggested by a sermon she had heard 
at the evangelistic meeting. I only know that if 
I were that teacher I should hate to think that 
a “poor lost soul” had asked me for “bread” 
and I had actually given her “a stone.” 


CHAPTER XIII 
Tempered by Fire 

I have been tracing the life threads that 
became tangled while under my care, and it may 
seem that there were more black sheep than 
white ones in my flock; but that is not at all 
true. The white ones predominated, but I have 
been chiefly concerned thus far with the “ wan¬ 
dering lambs” of the fold. 

Nor can it be said truthfully that the young 
people that went wrong, or whose feet were well- 
nigh slipping, were all of the lower stratum of 
our village society. Sin is no respecter of per¬ 
sons, and the problems of adolescent years are 
common to all classes. The cause of sin in the 
early teen years is too often ignorance, pure and 
simple, and later developments may be but the 
result of early misunderstanding. 

Back in my class list I have already men¬ 
tioned Orville Park as an exceptionally fine 
young man. He was quietly studious, of fine 
appearance, and possessed a quick, really bril¬ 
liant, mind. Orville’s parents were fine people, 
of good standing socially and financially, “ pil¬ 
lars” in our local church, and very devout. 

126 





TEMPERED BY FIRE 


127 


They were unquestionably good people; their 
weakness lay in the fact that they were proud 
of their goodness, of their gentility. They had 
no mercy whatever for a common sinner. 

Mr. Park was a class-leader in our church for 
years; but instead of serving as a real shepherd 
he was more like a watchdog guarding a select 
few. He was faithful to his duty as he saw it. 
He “cried aloud, and spared not” either friend 
or foe. He was expert in presenting complaints , 
and if he had had his way in our church and 
Sunday-school he would have pulled the “ tares 
from the wheat” about every new moon. Time 
has softened my opinion of him, and I believe 
that his heart was all right, but his will was 
inexorable. Because he was so merciless in his 
judgment he blocked the way oftentimes of 
some poor wanderer who was struggling toward 
the light. My young people were afraid of him, 
and because of him many of my class flatly 
refused to affiliate with the church. He sat in 
judgment on the pastor as well as on the people, 
and would circulate petitions in an effort to get 
rid of a minister who opposed his will. 

Yet he was a good man, faithful to his church 
duties, faithful in tithing, faithful in service. 
His “warning the unruly” was a part of his 
service; yet his judgment was intensely human 
and reflected very little of the divine. He was 
especially hard on my boys. According to his 


128 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


own story of his youth, he was at one time as 
wayward as the most untamed boy in my crowd; 
but that fact in itself tended to harden him, and 
he had no sympathy at all for youthful follies. 
He had several sons, but every one of them had 
left home, except Orville—the Benjamin of his 
ripened years—who alone was left in the home 
nest. 

If a good man can be said to have an idol, 
Orville was certainly the idol of his father’s 
heart. The boy was a regular bookworm and 
a dreamer. He was interested in science and 
expected to be a professor some day, although 
his parents were steering him toward the min¬ 
istry. He did not seem to care for games and 
parties; indeed, all social life seemed to bore 
him. In his high school years he went in for 
athletics, but more to keep himself in condition, 
I imagine, than for anything else. I sometimes 
think had Orville been less perfect during those 
early years more of my livelier boys might have 
had a better chance of becoming Christians; but 
he was the tape—or the type—by which all the 
other boys were measured. He was the last boy 
in my class one would have suspected of having 
any moral weakness, yet he fell an apparently 
easy prey to a “soft” girl and a series of “pet¬ 
ting parties.” 

It was during the first few months of his last 
year in high school. Orville had gained many 




TEMPERED BY FIRE 


129 


plaudits for his work in oratory, and carried off 
several honors at track meets. He had accepted 
the faith of his father very early in life, and 
during his third year in high school his quest of 
the professor’s chair faded, and he began to pre¬ 
pare himself seriously for the ministry. His 
teachers were pleased with him, his old parents 
were proud of him, his classmates all honored 
him, a bright future seemed to beckon him— 
then the unexpected happened. 

The girl in the case was not bad, but silly, 
and ignorant of nature’s laws. Orville, absorbed 
in his studies, was quite indifferent to girls’ 
society until she began to throw about him the 
subtle web of her flattery, extending invitations 
and making advances that, according to old 
rules of conventions, were supposed to be only 
masculine prerogatives. The friendship be¬ 
tween the two, kept on the plane of comrade¬ 
ship, would have meant inspiration and social 
uplift for both of them, but when it # driveled 
into a series of “ petting parties,” both were in 
equal danger. Her parents—nice people, by the 
way—saw the trend of affairs, but trusted 
blindly to the lad’s honesty, and the girl herself 
had “managed” them from her babyhood. They 
would have confessed to their helplessness had 
anyone taken them to task about it. 

In a very short time the inevitable happened. 
In Orville’s own confession he manfully shoul- 


130 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


dered all the blame, and as the price of his folly 
he assumed the burdens and responsibilities of 
a married man in his last year at high school. 
The ceremony was a quiet affair, but the cir¬ 
cumstances attending it leaked out, and were 
told and retold by all the gossip-mongers of the 
countryside. The affair nearly killed his par¬ 
ents. His stern old father still continued his 
brimstone warnings, but the poor old voice 
trembled and broke on the judgments. He did 
not spare his son. Like stanch old Abraham 
he was ready to sacrifice his beloved boy on the 
altar of duty. 

Meanwhile, Orville was having a hard time. 
Heretofore study had been second nature to him 
and his lessons had been mastered quite easily ; 
now it seemed as if his brain had shriveled in his 
humiliation, and the banter of his boy friends 
stung his pride. Their fun at his expense was 
actually cruel. More than once poor Orville 
traveled the length of the campus with a white 
placard on the back of his coat, on which some 
wag had printed in black letters the word 
“Papa.” School had become a nightmare; but 
with something of the mettle of his old father 
he fought it through, and ground out his studies 
to the bitter end. 

Commencement week was a flat failure so far 
as Orville was concerned, yet he stolidly engaged 
in all the activities of the graduating class. In 


TEMPERED BY FIRE 


131 


the final exercises he began his oration bravely 
enough, but with his supersensitive mind con¬ 
scious of unspoken criticisms, he stumbled and 
stammered toward the finish, and finally sat 
down in utter defeat. “Mr. Park is ill/’ one of 
his teachers kindly announced, to cover his 
retreat from the platform. 

Truly he was ill; for there is no bodily ail¬ 
ment equal in misery to soul-sickness. His 
proud spirit was literally crushed by his dis¬ 
grace. Of his relatives it can be said “they all 
forsook him and fled,” for not one appeared to 
do him honor at that commencement. He trod 
the wine press of his humiliation alone. 

In the summer he returned to our village, 
bringing with him his young wife. I shudder 
yet when I think of the public and private grill¬ 
ing to which that young man was subjected. 
His father, with religious zeal and fervor, verily 
refused to exonerate him, or let him go until he 
“had paid the uttermost farthing.” Orville was 
obliged to make a public confession before the 
church, while every old gossip-monger in the 
crowd sat and looked on and smacked his and 
her lips with satisfaction, as the unfortunate boy 
laid bare his quivering heart. 

Yet he lived through it all—lived to preach 
his initial sermon before that same congregation, 
who sat and listened to him with the tears rolling 
over many a furrowed face. Orville passed 


132 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


through the fiery crucible and came forth chast¬ 
ened and purified, but with every bit of his boy¬ 
ishness slain forever. The next autumn he left 
the village, taking with him his wife and little 
son. For a year or two he taught in rural schools 
and did local preaching. Then he took a short 
theological course in a good seminar, entered 
a certain ministerial conference, and took up a 
regular pastorate. I had suffered with Orville 
and had been inclined to resent the vigorous 
treatment which the church fathers had seemed 
to think so necessary in dealing with his case, 
especially the public grilling to which he had 
been subjected. I resent that even yet, and feel 
sure that with a less determined and less reli¬ 
gious soul the result might have been disastrous. 

A short time after he had entered the min¬ 
istry and become established in his regular work, 
it was my pleasure to hear Orville Park preach 
again. Then I understood. In his boyhood 
days and as a member of my Sunday-school 
class he had been what the other boys described 
as “ cock-sure of himself.” He was of the 
“ goody-goody ” type and in a class by himself, 
both in his own estimation and in the opinions 
of his associates. He was a trifle conceited and 
almost intolerant in his attitude toward other 
boys who were not at all blessed with his kind 
of home environment. He lacked sympathy and 
understanding. 


TEMPERED BY FIRE 


133 


But when I sat in that stuffy little church 
that hot August afternoon, and listened to that 
strong young preacher of righteousness, then I 
realized that from the depths of his terrible 
humiliation he had been born a “new creature,” 
able to feel keenly for the weak and erring. He, 
too, had sinned and repented even in “sack¬ 
cloth and ashes,” and God had reinstated him 
even as He had restored David of old, after a 
similar transgression. 

Orville Park threw himself into his work of 
soul-saving with all the energy of his mind and 
body. Not satisfied with two preaching ap¬ 
pointments with their pastoral duties, he took 
up others, driving long miles across country 
through storm and cold as well as in pleasant 
weather, in his zeal to carry the gospel to out¬ 
lying districts. 

His body, well-trained though it was, was not 
able to endure the severe strain he put upon it, 
and an early weakness began to make itself 
again felt in his system. Still he spared not 
himself and turned a deaf ear to all the advice 
and remonstrances of his friends. It was as 
though he felt his time to be short on earth, and 
that he must accomplish all that he personally 
could do in the brief period allotted to him. 

He literally wore himself out in his religious 
zeal, for he was engaged in evangelistic work, 
and in the pulpit, when his last illness came 


134 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


upon him, and in a few days he was dead. As 
his Presiding Elder said when preaching his 
funeral sermon, “He fell fighting, with his face 
to the enemy.” 

Poor Orville. He actually gave his life in 
expiation of his sin; for his high spirit never 
seemed to recover from the blight of disgrace 
that had so suddenly overwhelmed him. His 
widow is doing work in her way, and training 
their son according to the admonition of the 
Lord. The boy is very much like his young 
father in talent and disposition, and I wonder 
sometimes if the hand of the Lord will not yet 
be laid upon the child, and he be called to carry 
forward his father’s unfinished work. 

Orville’s untimely death seemed to crush com¬ 
pletely the spirit of the stern old man, his father, 
who had ruled as a spiritual boss in our village 
for many years. Broken in health as well as in 
spirit, he was forced to retire from active service, 
attid the cudgel he had wielded so long fell into 
disuse. In his place the church elected a younger 
and kinder man, who preferred to use the gospel 
of love according to St. John in dealing with the 
adherents of the church, rather than the fiery 
warnings and judgments of the Old Testament 
prophets. 

But the boys—and the girls—whom a gospel 
of love might have reached, were gone, and 
probably are gone forever from the old home 


TEMPERED BY FIRE 


135 


church. Out into the world to make new homes 
for themselves they went, one by one, and very 
few of them have ever returned to renew their 
associations with the scenes of their childhood. 
Our church today is quite depleted of its young 
people. Perhaps, some day, the pendulum will 
swing back and once again the ring of many 
youthful voices will be heard in our village 
church; but in the meantime we press rather 
wearily on with the spent strength and waning 
energy of older people. 

“Rescue the Perishing” is rarely sung any 
more; indeed, it seems almost to have disap¬ 
peared from our musical curriculum; yet more 
than ever do we need the spirit of it. We can¬ 
not all publicly preach the gospel, but we can 
all help lift up those who have fallen by the 
wayside of life. 


CHAPTER XIV 
Struggles and Disappointments 

Among my girls was one whom we all hon¬ 
ored, yet often misunderstood. In my class 
register I had her tabulated thus: Blanche 
Martin, very studious. I might have added 
that she was cold and proud, but I did not like 
to write that of the girl simply because she was 
reticent by nature and treated us all a bit dis¬ 
tantly. Proud she could not be, either of finan¬ 
cial or social standing in our community, yet 
she carried her head high and her gray eyes 
were at times almost defiant. She had more 
than her share of talents, I often thought, for 
she could draw, write, sing, and do several other 
things, all remarkably well. She had the soul 
of an artist, and her pale face would light up 
wonderfully and become almost beautiful when, 
on our occasional jaunts over the hills and 
through the forests of our countryside, she for¬ 
got herself in studying some living picture of 
nature. 

In her school work she easily outstripped the 
majority of her classmates; indeed, only one or 
two could qualify as her equal in intelligence 

136 


STRUGGLES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS 137 


our Bible-class work she ex¬ 
celled also, although she seemed rather intol¬ 
erant toward less brilliant students. She be¬ 
longed to the “ ninety-and-nine ” crowd and I 
was so busy in chasing after “ wandering 
lambs” that I gave her little thought and no 
concern. She was of an independent type and 
well able to care for herself. Years afterward, 
when a mere accident lifted the veil of the past, 
I began to appreciate and understand the strug¬ 
gle that had gone on so long and so bitterly in 
that young life. 

She was a foster child, though few knew the 
circumstances that had attended her birth. She 
had always lived with the Martins since they 
had come among us, and no one questioned her 
parentage except to say that she did not in the 
least resemble any other one of the family. Mrs. 
Martin suffered from a chronic disease, and her 
high temper was sadly uncontrolled and exag¬ 
gerated because of her affliction. Mr. Martin 
was a weak type of man, whom his wife frankly 
despised, although she poured out her affection 
freely and injudiciously upon their son, who was 
also a weakling and a badly spoiled child, sev¬ 
eral years younger than Blanche. I learned 
afterward that the girl was simply a slave in 
that household, nothing less. She knew no 
sympathy, no affection, absolutely no encour¬ 
agement, and scarcely any kindness. Although 


138 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


under stranger eyes the treatment accorded her 
was civil enough, when the door had closed 
upon the caller she was again subjected to abuse 
from the bitter tongue of the ambition-foiled 
invalid. 

When one knew the circumstances of her life 
it was no wonder at all that the girl held herself 
aloof from her associates. Blanche suspected 
that she was not of that fold, but she knew no 
other home, and she realized, young though she 
was at that time, that Mrs. Martin’s constant 
suffering had soured her disposition and sharp¬ 
ened her tongue. The family were not Chris¬ 
tians, not even churchgoers; but Blanche was 
among the first of my girls openly to confess . 
Christ as her personal Saviour. She was not 
among us at many of our pleasure parties, 
although she very seldom missed a Sunday ses¬ 
sion of the class. She led a life of restraint and 
of hardship, and her natural affection was so 
strongly curbed that as she developed into early 
womanhood she gained a reputation for pride 
and coldness, although her heart was burning 
with suppressed fire. 

She was ambitious, and possessed an insati¬ 
able love for study, and after long hours of 
housework she would often study far into the 
small hours of the night in order to make up the 
time she must needs lose when compelled to 
remain home from school because of extra labor. 


STRUGGLES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS 139 


I began to understand the girl the winter we 
organized our debating club. We met the last 
Friday evening of each month, and in connec¬ 
tion with the debate we had a club paper which 
we called The Chronicle. We had an editor 
and an associate editor, and Blanche served as 
one of the reporters and soon became a steady 
contributor. 

In her writing the fire of her suppressed 
nature began to manifest itself. Of course, the 
paper was a give-and-take sheet of jibes, and 
jokes, and neighborhood gossip, mostly, all done 
in long hand, for no one of us at that time pos¬ 
sessed a typewriter, to say nothing of a printing 
outfit. It was fun, but it was good practice, too, 
and it gave space for the best school essays, and 
even ran a few serials with home names ascribed 
to the characters, while in the stories fact and 
fiction closely and strangely intermingled. In 
these present busy days we could scarcely un¬ 
dertake a task so arduous and call it fun; but 
in the winter months of which I write we were 
isolated from the rest of the world by heavy 
snowbanks, and the roads that were plowed in 
and around the village often looked like long, 
deep tunnels. 

In this amateur newspaper work Blanche 
seemed to thaw out and became more a part of 
us in our class associations. Sometimes, in con¬ 
nection with the debate, or in place of it, we 


140 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


would put on a home-talent play at the school- 
house, which necessitated calling in older and 
younger characters in connection with our teen¬ 
age class members, thus in reality making quite 
a community affair of it. 

Our community center was called a village by 
courtesy only. Our population was widely scat¬ 
tered, although we could turn out quite a crowd 
on public occasions, and the ministers who 
served our pulpit often questioned where all the 
people came from, until they themselves tra¬ 
versed the windings of our country roads and 
discovered the numerous farmhouses tucked 
away in small clearings amid the woodland. 
Yet our central school was a good one so far as 
it went. It carried only eight grades as a rule, 
although we occasionally had a teacher who did 
not object to having pupils of the ninth grade; 
but after a good high school developed in the 
leading city of our county all work beyond the 
eighth grade was abandoned in the rural schools. 

Blanche continued her course at the village 
school and graduated from it with honor, al¬ 
though much of her work had been accom¬ 
plished outside of the regular school hours. She 
was even beyond her grade, for she had studied 
several high school subjects from the textbooks 
loaned to her by a teacher who was interested 
in her advancement. She was looking eagerly 
ahead to the county high school and had ar- 


STRUGGLES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS 141 


ranged to work for her board and lodging in a 
private family; even Mr. Martin, spurred on 
by the interested teacher, had gone so far as to 
arrange for her tuition and her schoolbooks; and 
an old horsehair trunk had been dragged down 
from the attic and was partly filled with a mis¬ 
cellaneous assortment of second-hand and made- 
over clothing, when, like a storm out of a clear 
sky, came disaster upon the girl’s ambition. 

Mrs. Martin was taken suddenly and seriously 
ill and Blanche must of necessity stay at home 
and care for her. Then it was that the girl 
revealed the true quality and strength of her 
nature; and even we, who knew and loved her 
best, could not detect the slightest bitterness in 
her surrender. September came, and pupils 
who had flunked badly in our local school, but 
were drawn by a love for change and adventure 
to the city, gayly departed for “town school” 
while back home, in a forest clearing on a sandy 
farm, and in a tumbledown house, plodded at 
humble tasks a girl whose very soul ached with 
longing for the student advantages that they 
would regard ever so lightly. 

Yet Blanche had something of the stoic in 
her disposition, for she studied on, although to 
do so she must steal from the night hours, muf¬ 
fling her window that no ray of light should 
betray her burning midnight oil. In that nar¬ 
row environment, amid heavy toil and often 


142 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


needless hardship, the really beautiful nature 
developed and expanded. Bravely she worked 
in the house and in the field, and patiently she 
waited on the querulous invalid, and gently 
closed the hard old eyes when, a few years later, 
Mrs. Martin died. 

A few months alter the funeral Blanche 
again turned hopefully toward her school work, 
only to be thrust back into the cheerless home 
to serve as housekeeper for Mr. Martin and his 
lazy son. Had they been more kind to her, in 
all probability Blanche would have served 
faithfully on until all of her youth had fled; but 
life had become more arduous than ever, and 
to escape it she married a young farmer who 
had long wooed her. In an atmosphere of love 
and appreciation, her nature softened and 
sweetened as she approached maturity, and I 
began to feel that after all God was mysteri¬ 
ously directing her pathway. Had she gone to 
school and college as she had planned, without 
having gone through the crucible of disappoint¬ 
ment and suffering, she would in all probability 
be today a cold, proud woman, intellectually 
brilliant, without doubt, perhaps famous in art 
or literature, but with a heart dead, or at least 
unresponsive to the appeals which life presents. 

Blanche has also ripened spiritually and is 
doing splendid Christian service in her com¬ 
munity. Through all the years she has kept up 


STRUGGLES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS 143 


her private study, and is now leading her chil¬ 
dren on to explore the heights she had hoped to 
attain. She is cultured and refined, and, being 
public-spirited, her influence is felt in civic 
affairs in her home town. She stands for better 
scholarship and better citizenship; for better 
homes and more family altars; clean amuse¬ 
ments ; and a more carefully reared and trained 
childhood. She is almost a pioneer in some of 
the things she has undertaken, but her influence 
is already felt over quite a wide territory. 

“ Yes, I was outwardly cheerful, I think,” she 
told me not long ago when together on a Sunday 
afternoon we were talking over the past. “ Yet, 
in my heart of hearts I rebelled, quite often. It 
seemed to me a cruel perversity of fate that I 
should be born with a love for study, with a 
hunger for culture and education, and then be 
compelled to toil amid such sordid surroundings, 
with the better part of me suppressed and so 
little understood. I knew I did not belong to 
the Martins, but they needed me, and away 
back in my helpless babyhood they had kindly 
befriended me. I knew, moreover, that it was 
Mother Martin’s rebellion at her misfortune 
that had embittered her nature, and I decided 
that I should not permit my disappointments 
to spoil my life. Yet I was not as quietly sub¬ 
missive as you think. I am glad that I never 
let them know it, but there was a time when I 


144 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


planned to desert the Martin family and go out 
into the world for myself. Your teaching on 
duty held me and, when I had sufficiently sur¬ 
rendered to pray over it, I felt that God Him¬ 
self was guiding my destiny, and that to be 
truly happy and useful I must submit to His 
plan. After that it was easier, although my 
ambition died slowly and I gave up my girl¬ 
hood’s dreams one by one. Evidently He wants 
me to serve Him in this little corner—you said 
that to me one time, dear teacher—and I am 
happy as a little candle to shine as best I can, 
although I am not a great intellectual light.” 

A little candle she calls herself, yet I happen 
to know that the steady pure glow of that light 
is touching and brightening many other lives, 
and some of them are far removed from her 
immediate neighborhood. She may not be con¬ 
sidered successful as the world counts success, 
but according to the wisdom of Solomon, “He 
that ruleth his own spirit is mightier than he 
that taketh a city.” 



CHAPTER XV 
Apples of Sodom 

In my class, with Blanche Martin, was an¬ 
other girl, also of the “ninety-and nine” crowd; 
Lenore Smith, the class wit. She was an athletic 
type of girl, very unconventional as to social 
customs, but with excellent home training. 
Although very dissimilar in their natures, she 
and Blanche were bosom friends. Indeed, 
Lenore was the only chum that Blanche ever 
had during the years of her girlhood. Blanche 
was a dreamer; but Lenore, despite her name, 
was a veritable tomboy. She, too, was ambi¬ 
tious; but while Blanche hoped to enter the 
world of art and literature, Lenore intended to 
be a lawyer, and had some notion of being some 
day a sort of feminine emancipator to free her 
sex from the traditions and customs of the past. 
I could well have wished her to succeed had she 
boldly attacked the god of Fashion that has 
so senselessly enslaved our womanhood; but 
Lenore in her girlhood was a most rabid suf¬ 
fragette, and talked of the “iron heel of man 
that had been ruthlessly planted upon the 
feminine neck.” 


145 


146 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


In our debating club Lenore was a natural 
leader and usually captain of the negative team. 
She was a very good speaker and really loved 
an argument. She not only loved to argue, but 
she loved to play baseball and climb trees and 
do other boyish stunts; and she positively hated 
sewing and all housework in general. She was 
even more of a student than Blanche, but along 
lines not usually preferred by girls. Lenore 
excelled in civics and mathematics. She, too, 
graduated with honors when she had finished 
the prescribed course of study outlined in our 
village school. 

Lenore’s parents strongly opposed the girl’s 
advanced ideas, and her father flatly refused to 
finance her way through high school. But, 
nothing daunted, Lenore took the plunge and 
worked in a private home for her board and 
lodging, while our village school board paid her 
tuition. After four years she graduated from 
the high school, and her brothers helped her 
financially to take a summer’s course in a State 
Normal. 

Then she began teaching school in rural dis¬ 
tricts and between terms continued her summer 
courses at the Normal. She was making good 
and her people were proud of her attainments; 
but Lenore was not satisfied. Her ambition 
dangled higher goals before her and dared her 
to follow on. Love crossed her path, but she 


APPLES OF SODOM 


147 


spurned it, and laughed at the humble home it 
offered. On, on! higher, and yet higher climbed 
the ambitious girl. She starved her body to 
feed her mind, and hoarded her precious 
dollars until she had sufficient to pay for 
another special course at the regular term of 
the State Normal College. Finally she finished 
at the Normal, but because she could ill afford 
the graduating finery of her class, she came 
home before commencement. 

Then she began to teach again, but in city 
schools. Law, for some reason best known to 
herself, had disappeared from her mental 
horizon, although she remained very keen on 
politics and freely discussed all the leading 
political issues of the day. She was still a suf¬ 
fragette, but no longer rabid. “ Equal suffrage 
is coming anyway,” she declared, “in the 
natural forward movement of national affairs.” 

Lenore became more feminine in her tastes 
as she grew older. In her teens she had had no 
regard for personal appearance, and quite 
frankly despised the ordinary conventions of 
society. But she who had been such a rebel to 
her sex began to change. She began to copy 
other women, and I suspect that a book on 
etiquette was sandwiched in between her chem¬ 
istry and her physics. I never saw it, but I am 
quite certain that it was there. Certain femi¬ 
nine articles of attire which she had denounced 


148 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


she now adopted, and expressed an interest in 
“ color schemes.” Her feminine soul no longer 
seemed to exult in masculine accomplishment. 

If love had again beckoned, I doubt not but 
that she would have exchanged her ambition for 
the comforts of a home. But love had passed 
her by, and in her unrest she began to wander 
from state to state seeking the position that best 
suited her. Then- she became dissatisfied with 
her work in the grades. She tried other clerical 
work for a while, then decided to climb a notch 
higher in her education. Her next move was to 
take up commercial work in a university, from 
which she graduated with the letters of a degree 
conspicuously prominent after her name. Then 
she began to teach in high school. Years have 
gone by. Her position is enviable, her salary 
munificent, but the soul of her is not satisfied. 
Her first youth has slipped by. She lives in a 
world of letters, so her ambition is regaled with 
the joy of achievement, but it fails to provide 
the natural heritage of her womanhood. 

She is on the border of life, a capable chaperon 
on occasion, but never a mixer with the gayety 
of her charges. She tries to dress herself youth¬ 
fully, but she is no longer youthful, and her 
attempt to look so often makes her ridiculous. 
She has even lost much of the fineness of her 
own ideals. She wants, above everything else, 
to be popular, and in her copying of popular 


APPLES OF SODOM 


149 


fads she indulges in the extremes which she her¬ 
self once so violently condemned. 

In her life-work Lenore has thought only of 
herself and has worked for self. She is a strong 
character and has done splendidly, but she is 
not happy. She even envies Blanche with her 
little group of children growing up around her. 
Lenore sees the world, listens to learned lec¬ 
tures, views rare paintings; in short, enjoys, or 
has the opportunity to enjoy, many of the things 
of this life for which the soul of Blanche Martin 
yearned. Yet where is the profit? Lenore has 
been so busy in making a living that she has 
failed to live her life. 

In the pursuit of her ambition she lost the 
religious zeal of her youth; that is the secret of 
her dissatisfaction. She inclines toward higher 
criticism, and in explaining away the spiritual 
truths of the sacred Word she has departed from 
the simple faith of her fathers. In the opinion 
of the world she is a success; yet she is home¬ 
less; for no boarding house, be it ever so fine, 
can be a real home, and her parents long since 
have gone the way of all flesh. Some day the 
age limit will disqualify her from further service 
in the schoolroom, then what will she have left 
to crown a life spent in pursuit of a worldly 
ambition? 


CHAPTER XVI 
Training for Service 

In the work with my class I found that even 
their entertainments could be made to produce 
valuable lessons in character building. Teen¬ 
age young folks can be guided, but not driven. 
As a rule they have a very good opinion of them¬ 
selves and a great deal of confidence in their 
ability. To tell them their faults would some¬ 
times be to mortally wound them, yet one can 
tactfully hold a mental looking-glass before 
their eyes occasionally and help them to dis¬ 
cover their own failings and weaknesses. I 
remember once using as such a mental looking- 
glass a Christmas play. 

Beth Lewis was a new girl among us and she 
proved to be rather arrogant and domineering, 
and inclined to patronize the other girls, prob¬ 
ably because she had recently moved from a 
large city and felt herself superior to the 
country young people. 

The play was a long one and the cast called 
for quite a number of people, so we had some 
difficulty in assigning the several parts. The 
leading part was especially difficult, and its 

150 


TRAINING FOR SERVICE 


151 


place in the dialogue was both frequent and 
lengthy. In producing the proper effect much 
depended on the personality of the player. 
Beth was in nowise a timid girl—quite the op¬ 
posite. She did not wait to be chosen, but came 
to see me when I was engaged with the com¬ 
mittee in charge in arranging the cast. 

“I have had quite a lot of experience in ama¬ 
teur plays and would like a leading part, one 
that has much to say/’ she informed me frankly. 

“We need somebody to take the part of the 
Deaconess,” I replied. “We had assigned the 
part to Mary Moore, but because of her mother’s 
illness she is afraid she cannot attend the 
rehearsals very often.” 

The Deaconess was the main character of the 
pla}^ and the part called for a steady, strong, 
unselfish personality, the opposite, in fact, of 
Beth’s disposition; but I thought best to let 
her try it. She went off happy in the thought 
that she would be the star of the occasion. She 
was discussing the subject of clothes with an 
interested group of girl friends when I passed 
them a few minutes later. 

“I’m going to have a perfectly scrumptious 
new dress for the play,” she was declaring in her 
usual boastful manner. 

“Deaconesses do not wear ‘perfectly scrump¬ 
tious’ gowns in real life,” Rosalie Hope informed 
her. “Mrs. Morrison will insist that we dress 



152 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


to suit the part we play, and anyway, you do 
not want to spoil the plot, do you?” 

A few days later Beth returned her copy of the 
play to me. “I like the part,” she said, “ but I am 
not suited to it. I cannot qualify for half the vir¬ 
tues of the Deaconess. I will take the part of the 
selfish rich girl, the character fits me,” she con¬ 
cluded in unwonted candor of self-analysis. 

She was quite right. The character of selfish¬ 
ness and conceit fitted her exactly, but had I 
selected it for her she would have resented the 
choice and lost all her interest in the success of 
the play. Eloise Hope was finally persuaded to 
accept the part of the heroic Deaconess, and in 
our frequent rehearsals the lesson taught by 
that noble character impressed itself indelibly 
upon every participator in the play. My girls 
learned from it more wholesome truth than any 
lecture of mine could possibly have accom¬ 
plished. We had these plays from time to time, 
and it was always my chief concern to see that 
the lines we studied should serve to build up 
character as well as to amuse an audience. 

* * * & * 

The social life of a Sunday-school is, after all, 
the real test of its character-building work. It 
is one thing to recite glibly in class, but quite 
another to put precept into practice. As in 
most Sunday-schools, I presume, our girls led 


TRAINING FOR SERVICE 


153 


in the star parts of our entertainments and the 
boys diffidently followed. One Children’s Day 
we decided to make a change and have the bo}^s 
take the lead in everything. Of course, the 
spirit of contest had its share in the occasion, 
for the boys were to show what they could do 
without the support of the girls. It took con¬ 
siderable planning to arrange the program with 
the boys centrally located, and the girls on the 
side lines; but it proved a success in every way, 
and helped our boys to assert themselves in the 
use of their latent talents. 

My girls were all in the chorus, and fifteen of 
my young men were selected for a drill. To 
make things as easy as possible we rehearsed 
this all by ourselves; but oh, what a time we 
had! I had a good assistant to help me, but 
the boys proved to be as hard to round into 
position as a bunch of frisky colts. We had 
worked out the drill maneuvers with beans, but 
live boys proved more difficult. After we had 
succeeded in lining up the picked fifteen accord¬ 
ing to size, so that the drill might be sym¬ 
metrical when in motion, we turned away for a 
moment to study further instructions. When 
we turned our attention again to that line-up 
of boys, nothing was in sight but a long row of 
leathershod feet ranged upon the altar rail, 
while the owners thereof were stretched on their 
backs upon the platform! 


154 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


We had our difficulties all along until we 
changed their captain, when the situation cleared 
at once, for we had managed to secure the right 
leader. No wonder the Master likened humanity 
to a flock of sheep! Every group has its leader, 
and where that one goes the rest will follow. 
So in my flock of fifteen lively boys for that 
special drill there was a natural leader; but, 
like the Israelites who chose Saul for their first 
king because of his stature and appearance, I 
had selected as captain Don Clark, because of 
his height and general good looks. However, 
Don failed me utterly in this instance, and I 
was about to acknowledge my dismay and 
defeat, when the smallest boy in the group 
offered a suggestion, and at once assumed com¬ 
mand over the straggling other fourteen. 

From that time on our practice work devel¬ 
oped without friction, and the eventful day was 
close at hand when I discovered that we had a 
traitor in the group—one whom I had been 
some time before obliged to reprimand for gross 
misbehavior. I had thought the little incident 
closed until one night I caught his glowering 
look when I asked him to do something for me 
during our rehearsal. I saw that he muttered 
something, and I was not surprised when a 
junior boy informed me that George had boasted 
at the store that he would practice to the end 
then flunk on the final day and spoil the drill. 



TRAINING FOR SERVICE 


155 


Of course, it would spoil it entirely if anyone 
failed in his part. At first I considered replac¬ 
ing George, dropping him entirely from the 
group; but I concluded that would make the 
situation even worse, and perhaps destroy my 
influence with the boy. So I had a quiet talk 
with the captain, and we selected two more 
boys and drilled with seventeen from that time 
on—the two extras to serve as supplies should 
we need them, but we were careful to station 
them in the lines close to my balky number 
seven. 

With this reinforcement our practice work 
went on, but the support of the two extras was 
not needed in the end; every man was at his 
place in the final round-up and did his work 
splendidly. Don was also peeved for having 
been supplanted by one of inferior appearance, 
and I suspect that this maneuver of drilling 
seventeen to do the work of fifteen averted 
trouble by filling the gap before it appeared. 

I have always felt happy over that drill. It 
was really beautiful, and the boys went through 
the intricate work with the precision of real sol¬ 
diers; but my reason for rejoicing was in the 
discovery of Frank Smithson, the doughty little 
captain, who not long afterward led other troops 
to victory. That little drill on that Children’s 
Day helped a bashful boy to find himself. It 
developed his initiative and cured his fear of 



156 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


others of greater physical ability. He is a 
leader today in the town where he lives; a 
leader in moral reforms and a superintendent 
of a live Sunday-school. 

V®-. v*» u. 

.f. »,» 

Another teen-age tangle of today is the 
housewife question, and it is truly a mighty 
problem in America, with our falling birth rate 
and our multiplied divorce evils. As a people 
we have cried out against early marriages, and 
our girls are too often educated away from the 
work of the home instead of being fitted to work 
within it. We need better homes in America if 
we are to perpetuate a noble people. 

Julia Chase, also of my reliable “ninety-and- 
nine” class-members, was not in my class often 
or long enough to get her name properly tabu¬ 
lated upon my register. Really we only 
enjoyed her companionship at rare intervals, 
during vacations, for she was being educated in 
the city. She was a bright, intelligent girl, an 
only daughter in an influential family, whom 
the parents and two older brothers badly 
spoiled. Whatever she may have been natu¬ 
rally, her home training tended to make her 
selfish, for her mother did all the work of the 
family without asking her assistance and 
declared frequently that Julia’s hands must be 
kept white and beautiful for her piano practice. 


TRAINING FOR SERVICE 


157 


Yet on the tennis court, golf links, and the river 
Julia’s hands grew firm and brown and her 
muscles developed and hardened with outdoor 
sports, while the foolish little mother toiled on 
alone at household tasks, and gave her own 
little income, the egg-and-butter money, all to 
Julia for the purchase of dainty finery of lin¬ 
gerie and linen. 

Mrs. Chase fondly imagined that some day— 
without any training—Julia would change, or 
with the fine salary a good education would 
insure, that Julia in her turn would take care of 
her; but before Julia had attained the fine- 
salaried position, indeed almost immediately 
after graduating from college, the girl married 
a young lawyer. 

George Mapes was a splendid young fellow, 
poor, but with plenty of energy and enthusiasm, 
and with a capable wife to help him would have 
made good; but Julia had been reared to con¬ 
sider her own interests first. She liked nice 
things, and she demanded nice things; yet she 
herself could make nothing more substantial 
than a chafing-dish rarebit, several varieties of 
fudge, and fancy towel edges, with a camisole 
yoke or two thrown in for good measure. That 
was the limit of her housewifely attainments. 
Young Mapes was a healthy man; while his 
heart claimed Julia as his queen, his stomach 
flatly rebelled at her culinary accomplishments; 


158 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


for it would have required the digestive appa¬ 
ratus of an ostrich to assimilate her leathery 
steaks and sodden vegetables. George could not 
afford hotel life, nor could he afford to hire a 
capable maid at post-war prices. 

Mrs. Chase, realizing her mistake in the home 
training of her daughter, made a desperate effort 
to retrieve the situation. She went to live with 
Julia one summer and earnestly sought to teach 
the girl the simple rudiments of housekeeping; 
but Mrs. Mapes only grew restless, chafed at 
restraint, and failed to respond to the unselfish 
devotion of her mother. Gradually the young 
husband and wife drifted apart in their inter¬ 
ests, and after a series of quarrels they separated. 

But Mrs. Chase, although she had failed Julia 
in matters pertaining to home-making when the 
girl was under her care, had incorporated into 
her daughter's inner consciousness a horror of 
the divorce evil, and on the one occasion on 
which Julia Chase had ever joined us in a class 
discussion of vital topics the question of divorce 
had been freely and frankly discussed from a 
Biblical standpoint. Selfish she was, it is true, 
but she was also fair-minded. She had the good 
sense to look the situation squarely in the face, 
and then she was sufficiently brave to acknowl¬ 
edge to herself that she was very much to blame 
for the unpleasantness of the entire affair. 
George, too, was unhappy, and in some way he 


TRAINING FOR SERVICE 


159 


learned that Julia was taking special lessons in 
cooking and had at last become interested in 
domestic science. 

In a short time their home was re-established. 
Both had learned a mighty lesson in mutual for¬ 
bearance, and now Julia says of the little daugh¬ 
ter in their home that “her domestic life shall 
not be neglected in her general education/’ 

We only wish that domestic science in our 
high school courses were made more practical in 
getting results. Very few girls can begin home¬ 
keeping with the latest improved methods, with 
modern gas and electrical appliances; and some¬ 
times they are just foolish enough to despise the 
ordinary wood or coal stove and the cooking 
utensils of their mothers’ generation. 


I 


CHAPTER XVII 
“Fine Feathers” 

Another teen-age tangle that often disturbs 
the minds of young girls is the matter of clothes. 
The clothing worn today by intermediate and 
high school girls is altogether too elaborate for 
an ordinary purse. In a land noted for its 
democracy, happy is the school that favors 
middy blouses and simple ginghams. Few gil ls 
have the courage to be just plain “different” 
from their comrades. 

At one time two of my Sunday-school girls 
were elected as delegates to attend a state con¬ 
vention of our denominational young people’s 
societies. The meeting was for a three-day ses¬ 
sion in connection with a camp meeting that was 
held annually in a beautiful grove along the 
banks of a lake. The tabernacle was a huge 
tent, and the majority of the people in attend¬ 
ance dwelt in small tents, although a few had 
cottages and still other few occupied dormi¬ 
tories in connection with the dining hall on the 
grounds. One of our two girls had been assigned 
a minor part in the convention program, and 
they came to me to ask advice concerning suit- 

160 


“FINE FEATHERS” 


161 


able clothing for the trip. I had been on that 
same camp ground many times and knew all 
about its uneven surfaces, its cut underbrush, 
and the unplaned lumber of the seats in its 
tabernacle, which were not at all adapted to 
delicate apparel; so I advised them to wear 
sensible clothing, cool but substantial, and 
heartily indorsed serviceable ginghams. 

But it turned out that the poor girls, by heed¬ 
ing my advice, suffered miserably at the hands 
of one who was certainly old enough to have 
known better than to judge by mere external 
appearance. I had the story from the lips of 
the girls later, so I will try to repeat it as one 
of them detailed the experience to me: 

“On our arrival we were met at the station 
by a bevy of girls in gay clothing. Our travel¬ 
ing suits were fairly good, you know, so we 
passed muster at the first inspection, and we 
were as happy as happy could be as we were 
motored merrily out to the camp ground. It 
was our first experience away from home and 
friends, but we were filled with delight at the 
newness of it, and anticipated three days of 
happiness living in the midst of that fine large 
tent colony, under the mighty maples of that 
splendid old camp ground. 

“ We were assigned to a tent already occupied 
by four other girls, and as we stretched out on 


162 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


a cot to rest a bit after traveling all night, they 
began to dress for the afternoon meeting, and our 
disillusionment began. One girl, whom I men¬ 
tally renamed Miss Fuss-and-Feathers, actu¬ 
ally dressed by her watch. She gave just so 
many minutes to brushing out her hair, just so 
much time to her complexion, and so much more 
to her finger nails. They were all almost equally 
fussy, but she was the limit, and I began to 
screw around so that I might cast a surrepti¬ 
tious glance at my own appearance in the mirror 
she had propped into position against the side 
of her traveling bag. 

“When finally we trooped over to the taber¬ 
nacle we were the only two of the six that car¬ 
ried notebooks, and Miss Fuss-and-Feathers was 
just painting in the high lights of her complexion 
when we were compelled to leave her after the 
second summons from the big bell. In the taber¬ 
nacle we enjoyed ourselves immensely; yet I 
looked around a little between notes to sum up 
the dressy atmosphere of the crowd. Ginghams 
and middies were in the minority, all right, and 
I began to feel like a country mouse among the 
girls, although the older women and young mar¬ 
ried ones were, as you would say, more sensibly 
dressed. How I longed for my lingerie, voiles, 
and dimities, and my one gorgeous Georgette 
gown, at home on their pegs in my closet! I 
knew I must save my precious dotted swiss for 


“FINE FEATHERS” 


163 


my appearance on the platform, but when that 
was over, I solemnly vowed to wear the thing 
in season and out so long as I was able to keep 
it decently clean. In my mental dissatisfaction 
over the contents of my suitcase I began to 
study faces, and the ones I liked best, strange 
to say, Mrs. Morrison, shone brightly above 
plain substantial dresses. They were not think¬ 
ing of clothes, but were feasting their hearts and 
minds on the good things that were being given 
to us from the platform. 

“The girls in our tent all changed again into 
even more elaborate gowns for the evening, for 
they were to appear in the choir. It seemed 
more like a dress show to me than genuine gos¬ 
pel singing, but their voices were musical and 
well trained, and I really enjoyed the song 
service. That night a young woman in a deli¬ 
cate blue silk dress led the praise service. She 
talked a little while on the majesty and power 
of brotherly love, and because I was getting a 
wee bit homesick, her words thrilled me and I 
forgot the dissimilarity between that old patched 
tent, the rough hemlock benches, the sawdust 
carpet on the ground, and that delicate and 
elaborate gown. 

“The next morning I met her in the grove 
and, ignoring the fact that we were strangers, 
forgetting everything but that I was homesick 
and that her words had sounded good to me the 


164 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


evening before, I went up to her and held out 
my hand, intending to tell her how much her 
talk had meant to me and to thank her for her 
words of good cheer. But she drew back coolly 
and looked me over with such curt appraisal 
that even my common-sense shoes fairly howled 
in distress. She didn't approve of me, that's 
certain, and as I stood there like an idiot with 
my hand still stretched out to her, she tilted her 
head at an angle and passed on without giving 
me even a nod of recognition; she who had dis¬ 
coursed so beautifully on brotherly love only 
the evening before. 

“I didn’t go to the service in the big tent that 
morning; I wanted to go straight home where 
people knew and loved me for myself alone. But 
I had agreed to give a paper on the work of the 
Sympathy and Relief Committee of our young 
people's organization; my name was printed on 
the program, the chairman knew that I was on 
the grounds, and I simply could not desert the 
camp, although every fiber of me winced and 
stung. So, instead of making a mad rush for the 
depot, I fled to my tent and soaked the old 
straw pillow with salty tears. 

“That afternoon I made my only dress-up 
appearance, and when ‘ Blue-Silk' looked up and 
saw me on the platform in a becoming dress (if 
I do say it), and it dawned on her that I was the 
person named on the printed sheet in her hand, 


“FINE FEATHERS” 


165 


she almost* had a spasm. But I had prayed 
while I wept in that little old tent, and although 
it had taken a lot of talcum powder to tone 
down the effect of the lachrymal deluge, there 
was peace in my heart, and I actually shook 
hands with her when she rushed up to me at 
the close of the meeting. No, she didn’t ask 
my pardon exactly, she didn’t even refer to the 
incident of the morning; but she almost fell on 
my neck and greeted me as her long-lost sister. 
Oh, I know you can’t judge folks by their 
clothes, Mrs. Morrison, yet clothes go a long 
way sometimes in making folks happy or 
miserable.” 

She was absolutely right. Clothes are alto¬ 
gether too mighty a factor in the feminine mind, 
and we forget that clothes, after all, do not 
make the woman. I’ll wager that my notebook 
girls carried home much more help and enthu¬ 
siasm from the speeches and discussions of that 
convention than either Miss Fuss-and-Feathers 
or that despicable “Blue-Silk.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 
Harvest Time 

The years have run their course and the 
members of that large class are now widely 
scattered; some of them have passed on; the 
majority of them are married; a few of them, 
at least, are proclaiming the gospel of salvation 
to others. Many of them I have not seen for 
several years, while with others I still keep up 
correspondence, and some I am able to visit 
occasionally. Some of my precious seed evi¬ 
dently “fell by the wayside,” and some of it 
apparently was sown on rocky soil; but, thank 
God, still other of it “fell upon good ground” 
and is already bearing fruit. 

Once in a while I have an unexpected meeting 
with some of the members of that old class, and 
oh, what pleasure it gives me to meet them 
again. Passing along the street of a certain city 
I met a lady and a gentleman. Not expecting to 
see anybody I knew, I did not recognize an old 
friend, until the gentleman turned quickly and 
spoke my name. A quick upward glance at the 
tall figure and I recognized Glenn Lawrence. 
He seemed as pleased as a child to meet me, 

166 


HARVEST TIME 


1(57 


and I was certainly glad to see him. The lady 
with him had withdrawn a little, evidently won¬ 
dering at his enthusiasm. He turned to her and 
introduced us: “My wife—my old Sunday- 
school teacher,” he said in explanation. 

Mrs. Lawrence glanced me over in cold sur¬ 
prise; then, with a decided sneer on her pretty 
lips, she remarked to Glenn: 

“Indeed. I didn’t know that you ever at¬ 
tended Sunday-school.” 

“ I never have since I met you,” he retorted 
quickly, and there was a distinct shade of bit¬ 
terness in his tone. 

They passed on, but the little incident re¬ 
called the past vividty. I thought of the boys, 
Glenn and Fred, of my class. Their home had 
been unchristian; they received no gospel teach¬ 
ing save that which our Sunday-school afforded 
them, yet they had been quite regular in attend¬ 
ance. Their parents had never come to church, 
except perhaps on funeral occasions. The father 
was a lumberman with no regard whatever for 
the Lord’s Day. It was his custom to plow his 
roads and open new skidways of saw-logs on 
Sunday, that his teams might be ready for busi¬ 
ness early on Monday morning. The mother 
had a reputation for profanity, with which she 
interspersed her round of scolding. The family 
brawls of that home had afforded plenty of food 
for gossip all of the time that they had lived in 



168 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


our village, and no one of us had regretted their 
departure when they moved away. 

It will be remembered that it was Fred Law¬ 
rence who played so large a part in the youthful 
romance of Mary Moore. I had spent a good 
deal of time on Fred, particularly for Mary’s 
sake, but had been obliged to give him up as 
being quite incorrigible. Fred had never seem¬ 
ingly cared for the things that pertain to a 
better life, but Glenn had betrayed a different 
attitude occasionally. But his environment was 
evil, the pull downward very heavy. 

As I walked along slowly, I thought of the 
boy as I had known him in those early days. 
I remembered the time he came to my door, 
his face bruised and battered, one eye black¬ 
ened and swollen. He was running away from 
home, he told me, and had called to say good- 
by. He explained that he had had a fight with 
his father, who had attempted to punish him 
for refusing to work on Sunday. He was only 
sixteen years old at that time. Glenn applied 
to my husband for work, but Mr. Morrison 
assured the boy that if we should hire him his 
father would collect his wages. 

Glenn stayed the day with us and we dis¬ 
cussed his case, pro and con. Finally we con¬ 
vinced him that it would be better to return to 
his home, live the new life as best he could, 
take up his cross of Christian duty, and thereby 


HARVEST TIME 


169 


convince his people that there was indeed a 
better life to live. My husband promised also 
to intercede with his father in his behalf, and 
we both agreed to help him all we could. It 
had taken considerable argument, tact, and 
patience to convince Mr. Lawrence of the right¬ 
ness of the boy’s cause, but he had been so 
pleased to have his stalwart son back home, 
that he agreed at least not to force him to do 
unnecessary work on Sunday. 

All that winter Glenn had seemed to do very 
well, and was quite active in our young people’s 
meetings. He told us that it was hard, that his 
people made sport of him, and made it a point 
to inform all of their particular friends that 
11 Glenn had got religion.” 

Several of our church people made repeated 
attempts to interest the family in the spiritual 
life, and succeeded in getting a cottage prayer 
meeting or two into their home during a series 
of revival meetings at the church. But their 
interest, little as it was, did not last long. Glenn 
tried to hold out against their mockery and in¬ 
fidelity, but he possessed a high temper and had 
never learned to control himself. I am confi¬ 
dent that he was sincere, but of him it can be 
said that “he had no root in himself” and when 
the sun of temptation lighted upon him the 
tender growth in his heart withered away. 

After the family moved away from the vil- 


170 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


lage I had heard no more of any of them until 
my chance encounter with Glenn in that dis¬ 
tant city. But I have wondered sometimes if 
I really did all I could to save that boy while 
he was a member of my class. Over against his 
name in my class register I had dwelt more on 
his evil environment at home than I had on his 
personal characteristics, and I fear that perhaps 
prejudice and lack of faith hindered my work 
with him to some extent. 

Yet, after all, I have a hope strong within me 
that sometime, somewhere, that young man, 
who was so glad to see his old Sunday-school 
teacher, who has demonstrated over and over 
again his hunger for the things of a better life, 
will become a disciple of the Lord Jesus. He 
may be an eleventh-hour convert; yet, even so, 
I expect to hear glad tidings of him. 

^ 

rj* »J» 

Another day and another meeting: again in 
a large city, but in a splendid church well filled 
with worshipers. I slipped into a rear seat and 
enjoyed the singing of a perfectly trained choir. 
The sermon that followed meant much to me, 
for the speaker was one of “my boys.” He saw 
and recognized me over the heads of his con¬ 
gregation, and with delight I noted his start of 
surprise, and caught his swift smile. He did not 
know before that moment that I was in the city, 


HARVEST TIME 


171 


but I knew whom I was to hear that day and 
had gone to his church with joy in my heart. 

He is one of my “ ninety-and-nine ” boys; one 
of the few who did not think it necessary in the 
plan of life to sow a crop of “wild oats.” His 
teen-age “tangle” lay in the fact that as the 
oldest child in a family of seven boys he hap¬ 
pened to be a boy and not a girl, for he had to 
wash dishes and look after his younger brothers 
until his college work relieved him of such 
domestic duties. 


.y. 

v v 

Yes, thank God, some of my old class have 
made good, very good; and for the others I still 
pray, confidently expectant that the good I dis¬ 
covered in those dear hearts will ultimately come 
to the surface and manifest itself to the world. 

Swiftly the years go by and I begin to inquire, 
“Watchman, what of the night?” And the 
answer comes back, “The morning cometh, and 
also the night.” In the springtime of this new 
generation—the wonderful teen-age period—I 
have sown my seed. The members of my old 
class are now in the years of fruition, and I often 
ask my own heart, “What of the harvest?” I 
can know but in part, for the harvest belongs 
to Him who sent me forth to sow good seed. 

As I write, a pile of letters is at hand—lines of 
communication from north and south, from east 


172 


TEEN-AGE TANGLES 


and west—from my spiritual children. Two are 
gospel singers in large city churches; and one 
of the two is Viola Cole, the erstwhile village 
waif, but now a talented musician; a dear 
woman and an earnest Christian. One—and I 
smile as I remember the pugnacious lusty young 
chap who once loved to “boss” his group at 
Wildwood corners—is a policeman in another 
large city. He had it in him to preserve law 
and order, but our village folk were too blind 
properly to recognize the aggressive spirit im¬ 
planted in him. 

Many of that old class are today teaching in 
public school and in Sunday-school; several are 
superintendents, a few are ministers, one is a 
pastor’s assistant, another is a minister’s wife, 
many others have served their country both at 
home and abroad. At least three have passed 
on to that “country from which no traveler e’er 
returns,” and the great majority of them are just 
plain fathers and mothers co-operating with God 
in His purpose and plan for this earthly life of ours. 

A few of them have promoted me from the 
position of “teacher” to that of “mother.” 
Some day we shall have a great meeting, a 
reunion of our Alumni in the New Jerusalem, 
it may be at the marriage supper of the Lamb, 
when I can say to my Lord in all thankfulness: 

“Behold I and the children which God hath 
given me.” 




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